realism essay definition

What Is Realism? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples

Realism definition.

Realism  (REEL-iz-um), or literary realism, is an era of literary technique in which authors described things as they are without embellishment or fantastical plots. Works of literary realism shun flowery language, exotic settings and characters, and epic stories of love and heroism. Instead, they focus on everyday lives and people in ordinary times and places.

Realism is also a style of visual art that focuses on producing a photographic quality through realistic lighting, color palettes, and subject matter.

The History of Realism

The advent of literary realism was a direct response to the over-the-top stories typical of  romanticism , an extremely popular movement in European literature and art between the late 18th century and the mid-19th century.

France was at the epicenter of realism. The writer Stendhal created pioneering works that realistically portrayed French life. He and others drew on the then-emerging fields of biology and psychology—as well as history, sociology, and the advancing Industrial Age—to craft stories and characters with whom the average reader could identify. Author Honoré de Balzac became a French realism icon with the publication of  La Comédie humaine , a series of more than 100 interconnected novels showing the reality of French life from 1815 to 1848. Novelist Gustave Flaubert was also highly influential with novels like  Madame Bovary , establishing a quintessential narrative  voice  for literary realism.

Realism did not remain a uniquely French phenomenon. It spread throughout Europe, with works like British author George Eliot’s  Middlemarch , and eventually the United States. William Dean Howells’s  The Rise of Silas Lapham , Mark Twain’s  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , Stephen Crane’s  The Red Badge of Courage , and Horatio Alger, Jr.’s  Ragged Dick  all depict realistic characters from various pockets of American life as they grapple with war, racism, materialism, and upward mobility. Other American realist authors include John Steinbeck, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and Upton Sinclair.

The impact of these early realist authors’ works shifted the larger literary focus away from explicitly romantic literature. They made realistic components essential to most genres of writing, even those that don’t meet the strictest definition of realism. Though literary realism as a movement died down around the mid-20th century, its impact lives on. Most modern writers seek to create characters and stories with which readers can, to some extent, relate.

But realism is not without its detractors. Critics say it is not possible to portray reality in literature because some amount of imagination and creative license is always necessary. Others argue that all literature—to one degree or another—has realist elements and can thus fall under the definition of  realism . Finally, there are those who think reality is subjective, which would make a definitive label of realism virtually impossible.

The Components of Realism

Works of realism aim to represent a specific reality. They accomplish this goal by incorporating various components into the narrative, including:

• Realistic characters:  Realist writers create characters who are rarely as black and white as the more cookie-cutter protagonists and antagonists of romanticism. In realism, characters are neither entirely righteous or totally corrupt—they are complex, with both positive and negative traits.
• Labor:  This concept plays a prominent role in many kinds of literary realism. The protagonist’s job is a significant aspect of their identity, whether for good or ill. Matters of heart and acts of monumental courage take a backseat to the more pressing demands of earning a living.
• Internal motivations:  In realist works, characters’ actions come less from external forces—for instance, honor, chivalry, or a noble effort to right a wrong—and more from internal needs like curiosity, desire, or greed.
• Genuine settings:  Writers of realism zero in on specific environments and the impact they have on the story. Their settings lean toward the sobering or the stark, and they tend to be more focused on smaller locations.
• Society:  This goes beyond a mere aspect of setting. Societies usually play a significant role in characters’ fates. Choices and events are dictated not by a grand idea of personal virtue and valor but by the conditioning imposed by society.
• Straightforward speech:  Dialogue is not lofty or overtly cultured. Instead, it reflects the  vernacular  of the characters of the specific time and place in which the story is set.
• Verisimilitude:  This is a philosophy that lends greater credibility and believability to the narrative. It concentrates on the details that accurately reflect human behavior and psychology.

Subgenres of Realism

A writer of literary realism might present their story through any of several subgenres.

• Magical Realism

In magical realism, the author integrates mystical or fantastical elements into a realistic  setting  and worldview. These elements don’t significantly alter the story’s logic and rationality, but they do add another dimension that gently pushes the boundaries of the possible. As a result, works of magical realism unearth magic in the everyday and celebrate the potential for transcendence amid the ordinary. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s  One Hundred Years of Solitude  is a classic example of a magical realist work.

Naturalism  utilizes scientific thought, especially the theories of Charles Darwin, to illustrate the inescapable influences that shape characters and their experiences. At the heart of all works of literary naturalism is the belief that science explains the conditions of reality and that metaphorical and supernatural elements have no credibility or presence in a story’s trajectory.  The Grapes of Wrath  by John Steinbeck is a popular naturalist work.

Psychological Realism

Works of this genre take an interest in characters’ motivation. Rooted in psychological thought, authors examine characters’ interior lives—their thoughts, emotions, and mental processes—to provide a fuller understanding of human behavior. One of the best-known works is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s  Crime and Punishment .

Social Realism

This era of literary technique involves telling stories about the poor and working classes. Social realism delves into the socioeconomic and political conditions to which these groups are subjected daily. This emphasis allows the author to comment on the political and social power structures that manufacture the challenges unique to characters’ demographics. An example of this subgenre is Arthur Miller’s  The Crucible .

Socialist Realism

These works venerate the struggles of the working classes to support larger socialist ideals. In fact, it was the official literary style in the socialist Soviet Union. An important work in this subgenre is  How the Steel Was Tempered  by Nikolai Ostrovsky.

Theatrical Realism

Theatrical realism applies to dramatic works written for the stage. Plays in this style aim to make theatrical stories truer to life. Theatrical realism might employ any of the aforementioned subgenres to provide a more authentic grounding for the drama, the characters, and their choices. One prominent play in the theatrical realist style is  A Doll’s House  by Henrik Ibsen.

Realism’s Relationship to Other Literary Eras

There are two prominent eras of literary technique that oppose or intersect with realism: romanticism and idealism.

Realism vs. Romanticism

Romanticism  is realism’s polar opposite. Romantic works tell stories of larger-than-life characters who embark on ambitious adventures, pursue passionate love affairs, discover new worlds, conquer fearsome enemies, or otherwise make themselves paragons of virtue and nobility. Conversely, literary realism tells stories as truthfully and authentically as possible, without glamorizing or sentimentalizing key details. Jane Austen and Herman Melville are prominent romantic authors.

Realism vs. Idealism

Idealist literature spotlights characters who place substantial importance on pursuing their values and principles—whether moral, philosophical, or political. They will persist at the expense of all else, including practical behavior. In fact, a hallmark of idealism is imagining things not as they currently are but as they would be in a perfect world.

In this way, idealism is a separate, antithetical idea to realism. At the same time, idealistic tendencies can make their way into works of literary realism. In socialist realism, for instance, there is heavy-handed idealism; by integrating it, the authors extol the benefits of socialism to persuade the masses.

The Function of Realism

Literary realism presents an accurate depiction of reality to the reader. Consequently, the reader may better identify with the characters or situations because they’re seeing aspects of themselves or their own experiences in the work. Representation is important to readers, especially marginalized populations who don’t always see characters who look, act, think, or in any significant way mirror themselves or their lives. In this sense, realism can help readers find community and remind them they are not alone.

Realism also sheds light on important social and political issues that are frequently ignored. By presenting reality as it is, readers see the struggles others deal with, creating awareness, empathy, and understanding.

Notable Realist Authors

• Isabelle Allende,  The House of the Spirits
• Anton Chekhov,  The Seagull ,  The Cherry Orchard
• Theodore Dreiser,  Sister Carrie
• George Eliot,  Adam Bede ,  Middlemarch
• Gabriel García Márquez,  One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”
• Leo Tolstoy,  War and Peace
• Ivan Turgenev,  Fathers and Sons
• Edith Wharton,  The Age of Innocence ,  Ethan Frome
• Émile Zola,  Germinal

Examples of Realist Literature

1. Frank Norris,  McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

A prominent work of American literary realism,  McTeague: A Story of San Francisco  chronicles the moral descent of a young dentist, McTeague, and his wife, Trina. On the eve of their wedding, Trina wins $15,000 in the lottery. The couple settles into married life, but each partner spirals down a pit of greed and despair. McTeague grows abusive, and Trina increasingly fixates on money. In the end, McTeague kills Trina, as well as his best friend Marcus, and ends up stranded in Death Valley, handcuffed to Marcus’s corpse.

The novel illustrates in brutal detail that human lives and fates are not always determined by conscious choices but by external forces. This passage shows Trina’s increasing preoccupation with money:

At times […] she would lock her door, open her trunk, and pile all her little hoard on her table. By now it was four hundred and seven dollars and fifty cents. Trina would play with this money by the hour, piling it, and repiling it, or gathering it all into one heap, and drawing back to the farthest corner of the room to note the effect […]. She polished the gold pieces with a mixture of soap and ashes until they shone […]. Or, again, she would draw the heap lovingly toward her and bury her face in it, delighted at the smell of it and the feel of the smooth, cool metal on her cheeks. She even put the smaller gold pieces in her mouth, and jingled them there. […] She would plunge her small fingers into the pile with little murmurs of affection, her long, narrow eyes half closed and shining, her breath coming in long sighs.

2. Henry James,  What Maisie Knew

This work tells the story of Maisie Farange, a little girl caught between her divorced, warring parents. The adults focus only on their own happiness and use Maisie as a pawn. The book is a scathing commentary on relationships, the dark side of human nature, and the untenable position in which children are often placed. This is evident in the following description of Maisie’s parents’ fighting—and of the society that created it:

This was a society in which for the most part people were occupied only with chatter, but the disunited couple had at last grounds for expecting a time of high activity. They girded their loins, they felt as if the quarrel had only begun. They felt indeed more married than ever, inasmuch as what marriage had mainly suggested to them was the unbroken opportunity to quarrel. There had been “sides” before, and there were sides as much as ever; for the sider too the prospect opened out, taking the pleasant form of a superabundance of matter for desultory conversation.

3. Margaret Drabble,  A Summer Bird-Cage

A Summer Bird-Cage  is an account of a marriage in shambles seen through the eyes of a third party. Sarah watches as her sister Louise enters a loveless marriage with the insufferable Stephen. Louise knows that her husband is arrogant but chooses to ignore it; she instead occupies her time by having an affair with his friend. Tensions build between the two sisters until Sarah confronts Louise about the latter’s damaging decisions and attitudes toward life and love.

Drabble concentrates less on plot and more on cultivating the psychological realism of the story and the two principal characters. The sisters share a barely concealed animosity. For example, Sarah says:

In the end she taught me the art of competition, and this is what I really hold against her: I think I had as little desire to outdo others in my nature as a person can have, until she insisted on demonstrating her superiority. She taught me to want to outdo her. And when, occasionally, I did so, her anger hurt me, but as I had won it by labour from indifference, I treasured it. And when, finally, I took over one of her men at Oxford, the game was out in the open, I thought, for the rest of our lives.

Further Resources on Realism

Goodreads has a list of  Popular Realism Books .

English professor Ali Taghizadeh offers an academic perspective on  A Theory of Literary Realism .

The British Library looks at  realism in British literature .

Salon  puts forth the theory that  Literary Realism Is Dead .

Longwood University has compiled a comprehensive list of  American realist authors and their works .

Related Terms

• Romanticism

Definition of Realism

Realism is a movement in art and literature that began in the 19th century as a shift against the exotic and poetic conventions of Romanticism . Literary realism allowed for a new form of writing in which authors represented reality by portraying everyday experiences of relatable and complex characters, as they are in real life Literary realism depicts works with relatable and familiar characters, settings , and plots centered around society’s middle and lower classes. As a result, the intent of realism developed as a means to tell a story as truthfully and realistically as possible instead of dramatizing or romanticizing it. This movement has greatly impacted how authors write and what readers expect from literature.

For example, playwright Anton Chekhov reflects in most of his writing a rejection of his romantic contemporaries and predecessors that tended to falsely idealize life. Chekhov’s plays and stories, instead, are made up of characters that are frustrated by the realities of their social situations and their own behaviors and feelings. His characters represent real, ordinary people who want happiness but are limited by and entangled in everyday circumstances.

Common Examples of Themes in Realism

Like most genres and literary movements, realism features fundamental, common, and recurring themes and motifs . Here are some common examples of those themes and conventions in literary realism:

• close, detailed, and comprehensive portrayal of reality
• emphasis on appearance of what is real and true
• importance of character over action and plot
• complex ethical decisions are often the subject matter
• characters appear real in their complexity, behavior, and motives
• characters appear natural in their relation to each other and their circumstances
• importance of economic and social class, especially “middle” class interests
• plausible, logical events (not overly sensational  or dramatic)
• natural speech patterns among characters in terms of diction and vernacular (not overly poetic in language or tone )
• presence of “objective” and impartial narration of story
• subsets include: magical realism, social realism, “kitchen sink” realism, psychological realism, socialist realism

Examples of Novels in Literary Realism

Due to the changes in class structure with the developments of the second half of the 19th century, the novel became extremely popular. Literacy grew and written works were more accessible. Realism also enhanced the prevalence of novels since their subject matter often focused on characters and themes important and relatable to the working class, middle class, and social mobility.

Here are some examples of novels that helped to shape this literary movement:

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ( Mark Twain )
• House of Mirth ( Edith Wharton )
• The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
• The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)
• Daisy Miller (Henry James)
• The Call of the Wild (Jack London )
• Middlemarch ( George Eliot )
• Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray)
• Jane Eyre ( Charlotte Bronte )
• The Grapes of Wrath ( John Steinbeck )

Famous Authors’ Perspectives Regarding Literary Realism

It is beneficial, for understanding literary realism, to get a sense of how well-known writers feel about this technique and movement. Here are some famous authors’ perspectives regarding literary realism.

• The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. (Anais Nin)
• Realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm. (Ambrose Bierce)
• Would it not be better to have it understood that realism, in so far as the word means reality to life, is always bad art — although it may possibly be very good journalism? (Sherwood Anderson)
• Nothing is more real than nothing. (Samuel Beckett)
• Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to be eternal and omnipresent and always attractive to kids. (Ursula K. Le Guin)
• I don’t want realism. I want magic! ( Tennessee Williams )
• Realism can break a writer’s heart. (Salman Rushdie)
• It’s all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that’s all. People see what they think is there. (Terry Pratchett)
• It seems to us that the readers who want fiction to be like life are considerably outnumbered by those who would like life to be like fiction. (Sara Caudwell)
• When I work, I’m just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that’s not familiar. But I’m not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear. (Don DeLillo)

Difference Between Realism and Naturalism

There is often confusion in trying to differentiate literary works that feature realism and those that feature naturalism . Naturalism is considered a form or subcategory of realism that is heavily influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The writers that pioneered the realist movement created complex, relatable characters while presenting detailed and realistic observations of society. In addition, realism encouraged narration that shifted away from romanticized and poetic language. This allowed writers to adopt a more truthful voice and address conditions of real life, including the realities of war, poverty , etc.

Naturalism, as a post-Darwinian movement of the late 19th century, attempted to apply the “laws” of scientific determinism to fiction. This movement upheld the belief that science provides an explanation for social and environmental phenomena. Naturalist writers extended the objective presentation of the details of everyday life as an insistence that literary works should reflect a deterministic universe in which a character is a biological entity controlled by environment and heredity.

Here are some examples of themes and conventions that reflect literary works of naturalism and differentiate them from realist works:

• grim, animalistic environment
• antisocial behavior and rough language of characters belonging to lower class
• Themes of survival
• a deterministic theory that genetic endowment is inescapable
• lack of ability to impose individual will
• pessimistic, tragic view of life

History of Realism in the US

Realism in the United States crept into literature, music, and art in the middle of the 19 th century and stayed until the early decades of the 20 th century. The artists, writers, and literary scholars depicted the social realities, contemporary landscapes, and ordinary people in their writings as well as paintings. Some of the popular writers depicting realism in their literary pieces are Henry James, Stephen Crane, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, George Lukas, and William Glackens.

History of Realism in the UK

Realism in the United Kingdom dates back to the decade of 1850 but it actually started during the Victorian period (1837-the 1901). Although the English ideals were being portrayed in literary pieces, Victorians turned to the depiction of what is known as the opposite of that. The imminent Victorian writers who were realists were George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens , Thomas Hardy , etc.

Six Types of Realism

There are six types of realism given in the writings of different writers. These are as follows:

• Magical Realism: Magical realism shows fantasy as reality such as in the novels and stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez .
• Social Realism: It shows the true living conditions of the workers such as in Hugo’s Les Miserables.
• Naturalism : It shows the influence of the Darwinian theory of evolution such as in the writings of Emile Zola and William Faulkner .
• Psychological Realism: It shows the inner side of characters that exist in reality such as in the writings of Dostoyevsky.
• Kitchen Sink Realism: It shows the realism focusing on the young British working class as in the writings of John Braine.
• Socialist Realism: It shows the realism glorifying the struggle of the working class as shown by Gladkov in his novels.

 Difference Between Romanticism and Realism

Romanticism is quite simple to understand by its name. It comprises fantasy shown through fiction, realism means to portray what actually exists. In other words, realists were more concerned with the world as it existed at that time than with the world of fantasy. However, the romanticists were mostly involved with the fictionalized world and also the world based purely on fantasy. Therefore, romanticism was based on fantasy rather than reality.

Difference Between Realism and Impressionism

Impressionism means to capture imitations of an object which is also called its essence. Realism is only related to its accurate description that actually exists. In other words, impressionism is more concerned with light in painting. Therefore, it could also be shown in writing. On the other hand, realism is the contrary it is showing the actual reality and not its silhouette.

Difference Between Nominalism and Realism

Nominalism is concerned with abstract concepts, showing that they do not exist as they are in the tangible world, or in material shape. Realism, however, is more concerned with showing the physical world that actually exists. In literature, it means pertaining to names in that reality is made up of only items and this exists because of the things or items and not on their own. It also means that the world does not exist in just people’s/reader’s minds.

Examples of Realism in Literature

Realism is a literary technique and movement that revolutionized literature. Literary realism creates the appearance of life as it is actually experienced, with characters that speak the everyday language and are representative of everyday life as a reader would understand it. Here are some examples of realism in literature and how they enhance the value of a literary work:

Example 1: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.

Steinbeck encapsulates the scope of literary realism with this quote from his novel. The objective of most realist writers is to open the eyes and minds of readers to find comfort in the truth, without exaggeration , over-dramatization, or romanticism. Steinbeck’s novel traces generations of a family that faces realistic issues such as jealousy, betrayal, disappointment, and other struggles. However, rather than overdramatizing these circumstances or romanticizing the characters, Steinbeck portrays them as objectively and truthfully as possible for fiction. This allows readers to identify and relate to the novel as a form of literary realism.

Example 2: A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

Nora: And then I found other ways of making money. Last winter I was lucky enough to get a lot of copying to do. I locked myself in and sat writing every evening till late in the night . Ah, I was tired so often, dead tired. But still it was wonderful fun, sitting and working like that, earning money. It was almost like being a man.

In his play , Ibsen presents a harsh criticism of Victorian marital expectations and the traditional roles that men and women play in society. In this work, Ibsen portrays the main character, Nora, as a woman who is treated like a child by her husband and other characters. As a result, the play exposes Nora’s restricted role as a woman with respect to choosing an individual path, earning income, and making important household decisions.

Ibsen’s drama is a realistic exposition of societal problems that come about due to the drastic imbalance of power between women and men. The characters are relatable in the way they speak, feel, and behave. In addition, their decisions and actions are realistic and complex. This realism is significant in terms of the way the reader/ audience understands the underlying themes of the play.

Example 3: The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

Initially, it appears that Chopin’s work of short fiction is a form of Romanticism with idealized characters and overdramatic depictions of events. As the main character Louise receives news that her husband has died, she isolates herself in a room with what the reader believes is the intention to overcome the shock and mourn her very recent loss. In a Romantic literary work, Louise’s reaction and behavior would have been described through poetic language and dramatic depictions.

Instead, Chopin creates a realistic and relatable, though surprising, reaction within Louise at the hearing of her husband’s death. She is sad that he is gone and knows she will miss his love. However, Louise looks to the future and understands suddenly that she is free of the entrapments of marriage and her role as a wife. Chopin reveals a complexity in Louise’s character that is realistic. In addition, as a form of realism, the story confirms many of the societal issues present at the time–particularly for women in terms of personal, economic, and social freedom. For readers, this realistic portrayal of Louise’s complex character and conflicting feelings is an assertion that, as a woman, she is an individual and not exclusively enmeshed in her role as a wife.

Example 4: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave , and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece–all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round– more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer lit out.

This example shows the description of Tom and Widow Douglas and how they interact with each other. It shows pure realism as it happens with them and Mark Twain only describes how it happens.

Example 5: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

That was two months ago. Then he wanted to come – to the house. He wanted to stay there. He said al of us – that he would not have to work. He made me come there – in the evening. I told you – you thought I was at factory. Then – one night it snowed, and I couldn’t go back.  And last night – the cars were stopped. It was such a little thing – to ruin us all. I tried to walk, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want you to know. It would have – it would have been all right.

Rudkus is telling what he wants to do and what not. He tells about his work and the actual situation which is a purely realistic portrayal of his life. This also shows that it happens as it is and not as it should be.

Example 6: The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

But he obstinately took roundabout ways, and presently he was where he could see long gray walls of vapor where lay battle lines. The voices of cannon shook him. The musketry sounded in long irregular surges that played havoc with his ears. He stood regardant for a moment. His eyes had an awestruck expression. He gawked in the direction of the fight.

This description of Fleming shows realism at work but it is also called naturalism as it shows the nature of things, too. Therefore, naturalism is also realism, but it is its extreme form as shown through the walls that vapor comes into bamboozle Fleming.

Synonyms of Realism

Realism, like all other literary devices , is also irreplaceable, yet a few following words come close to it in meanings. They include fidelity, authenticity, verisimilitude , truthfulness, accuracy, naturalism, and faithfulness.

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Europe 1800 - 1900

Course: europe 1800 - 1900   >   unit 5, a beginner's guide to realism.

• Courbet, The Stonebreakers
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• Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans
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• Eva Gonzalès, A Loge at the Théâtre des Italiens
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• Honoré Daumier, Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of an Art

Realism and the Painting of Modern Life

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Bernard Harrison currently holds an Emeritus Chair in Philosophy at the University of Utah. At the University of Sussex, where he taught from 1963 to 1992, he profited from the presence of a stellar group of colleagues in literary studies, including A. D. Nuttall, Stephen Medcalf, and Gabriel Josipovici. His interests include the interfaces between literature, moral philosophy, and the philosophy of language. His books include Fielding's Tom Jones: The Novelist as Moral Philosopher, Inconvenient Fictions: Literature and the Limits of Theory, and (with Patricia Hanna) Word and World: Practice and the Foundations of Language.

• Published: 02 September 2009
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This article considers the relation between literature and philosophy during the period of realism. It explains that the notion of realism, in its development as a term of literary criticism, is in origin a genre concept and that discussions of realism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary criticism and polemic rapidly acquire a moral, political, and philosophical dimensions. It suggests that all questions of literary form and technique fall to the will of the writer to determine. However, the article states, it does not follow that literature is a free field for play in the sense of frivolity because the connection between literature and reality does not run by way of the truth or falsity of statements, but by way of deeper linkages, internal to language, between the meanings of words and the practices that constitute human worlds and form the outlook and personalities of their inhabitants.

For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fooles —Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her. —Walt Whitman, The Over-Soul

The notion of realism, in its development as a term of literary criticism, is in origin a genre concept. “Realistic” writing is, in that sense, essentially writing that deals with “low” rather than “high” topics, with the doings of ordinary people leading everyday lives, rather than with the acts of gods, princes, or nobles; and deals with them in a “low” style, a style close to the plain language of daily life, and remote from the “high,” poetic diction considered appropriate to the latter. Erich Auerbach's great book Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1957) deals exhaustively, through a multitude of examples, with the gradual emergence of such concerns and styles of writing in literature from late antiquity onward.

Discussions of realism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary criticism and polemic, however, rapidly acquire a moral and political dimension and, in consequence, a philosophical one. Realism in literature, for one thing, becomes associated with claims to “truth,” or at least to the truthful “representation of reality.” Edmond and Jules Goncourt, in the preface to their 1864 novel Germinie Lacerteux , a preface that constitutes inter alia a kind of manifesto on behalf of the French literary realism coming to birth in the period, assert bluntly, “Le public aime les romans faux: ce roman est un roman vrai” [“the public likes false novels: this novel is a true one”] (as cited in Auerbach 1957 : 435). A later passage in the preface both forges and explains the connection between an older realism, defined by “low” characters and style, and a newer realism, in France that of Émile Zola and Guy de Maupassant, for example, which adds to these purely stylistic concerns those of social justice and the revelation of otherwise hidden depths in society:

Vivant au XIXe siècle, dans un temps de suffrage universel, de democratie, de libéralisme, nous nous sommes demandés si ce qu'on appelle “les basses classes” n'avait pas droit au Roman; si ce monde sous un monde, le peuple, devait rester sous le coup de l'interdit littéraire et les dedains d'auteurs, qui ont fait jusqu'ici le silence sur l’âme et le coeur qu'il peut avoir.

[Living in the nineteenth century, in a time of universal suffrage, of democracy, of liberalism, we asked ourselves if what is called “the lower classes” did not have a right to the Novel; if that world beneath a world, the people, must remain under the literary interdict and the disdain of authors who have so far kept silent upon the soul and the heart which it may have.] (1957: 435)

From this point, the line of descent is unbroken to twentieth-century theorists of social realism such as György Lukács ( 1963 ) and to a host of writers who consider themselves to be in some sense informing their readers upon, or making present to them, real aspects of their lives and times that would otherwise remain unnoticed and unreflected upon.

Realism in this sense sets up, as realism considered purely as a genre concept does not, one of those linkages, or tensions, between literature and philosophy that it is the business of this volume to investigate. It opens the door, in other words, to a question of one of the standard kinds that professionally occupy philosophers: what could possibly justify claims of this sort? If literature is to be, in some sense, an exploration, an investigation, of reality, then some relationship must, presumably, subsist between it and reality. What relationship could that be? As we shall see, pursuing this question very soon involves a second, and perhaps more profound, set of inquiries: Why is literature valuable? Is its value intrinsic or extrinsic to it? To what extent does its value derive from its relationship to reality?

Two answers to the first question, of the precise nature of the presumed relationship between literature and reality, have long been available. According to the first, the relationship is a mimetic or representative one, and the value of literature consists in its power to represent to its readers, to bring before them, aspects of human life of which they would otherwise remain ignorant. According to the second, the relationship in question is simply truth . Great works of literature, on this view, are of value because they “embody” or “express” important general truths about human life and society. Both answers are, in their origins, comparatively ancient. The first, that the business of literature, as of all art, is mimesis derives ultimately from Plato. The best recent defense in English of that claim is to be found in A. D. Nuttall's A New Mimesis (1983). It swims against the prevailing current of thought, mainly of French origin, associated with the movement known as critical and cultural theory. The view dominant within critical and cultural theory is that the main social function of literature is the dissemination of ideologies—generally reactionary ones, whose function is to sustain one ruling group or another in power. The claim of literature to have any commerce with reality is baseless, since its function is precisely to disseminate an illusory representation of reality. As the following passage of Roland Barthes in “L'Effet du Réel” (1968) affirms, we are dealing, in the case of the purportedly “realistic” details that authors insert in their work, not with reality, but merely with verisimilitude:

[D]ans le moment même ou ces détails sont réputés dénoter directement le réel, its ne font rien d'autre, sans le dire, que le signifier; le barométre de Flaubert, la petite porte de Michelet ne disent finalement rien d'autre que ceci: “nous sommes le réel.”

[T]hey do not say so, but at the very moment at which these details reputedly directly denote reality, they in fact merely signify it; Flaubert's barometer, Michelet's little door, have in the end only this to say: “we are reality.”] (cited in Nuttall 1983 : 56)

The second general claim often advanced in favor of realism, that literature conveys valuable general truths, has found a great many modern adherents among writers and literary critics of the past two centuries, though fewer among philosophers. It emerged at least as long ago as the seventeenth century and was already familiar when, in the following century, Samuel Johnson, in Rasselas , famously put a version of it in the mouth of the poet Imlac:

“This business of a poet,” said Imlac, “is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances. He does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest … He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age and country …; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same ” (1909: 48, emphasis original)

Many more recent forms and versions of it are described and critically evaluated in Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen's book Truth, Fiction, and Literature (1994), which offers an invaluable resource for this branch of the topic. But once again, any such view has long been under threat from philosophers and literary theorists generally. Lamarque and Olsen deploy arguments that leave one deeply skeptical of the idea that any version of realism so founded can be made to stand up to rational scrutiny. They opt themselves for what they call a “no truth” theory of the functions and value of literature, which I address further below.

It is nevertheless observable, despite the force of the academic arguments brought against it, that the conviction that great literature has cognitive gains to offer its readers, that it sheds light on “reality” in some sense of that complex and abused term, and that it does so both by “holding up a mirror to nature” and by opening access to otherwise inaccessible insights that it is hard to avoid describing as “truths,” retains a far greater hold at present over the minds of intelligent, educated general readers than it does over those of philosophers, literary theorists, and other professionally interested parties. It is open to us, as theorists, to conclude that those outside our charmed circle who cling to such views are simply poor deluded souls swept along in the current of their already outmoded times—times, indeed, that have mysteriously so far failed, as times sometimes will, to yield to the persuasions of currently fashionable versions of historicism, but no doubt will so yield in time. But, on the other hand, it may equally be the case that the deluded masses see something we do not. It is this second possibility that I explore here.

It is best to begin by examining some of the main arguments against the idea that literature has, or could have, any connection with reality. The most obvious, and potent, perhaps, spring from the evident fact that works of literature are created by an author who performs his or her creative task simply by arranging words on a page at the behest of his or her free choice. It can be objected that the production of literary works, at least of those realistic or naturalistic in intention, must to some degree be constrained by the nature of reality. But to this it can be retorted, as in Barthes passage quoted above, that such constraint as is exerted by reality on the creation of the literary text is brought to bear on it, not by the need to achieve truth, but merely by the need to secure verisimilitude : to produce, in other words, not so much a faithful depiction of reality as a work likely to be accepted by a majority of its readers as a faithful depiction of reality.

In modern philosophy, that simple point has been greatly refined and sharpened, like much else in philosophy, by the work of Gottlob Frege. Frege held that a statement cannot be assigned a truth-value unless the names that enter into its composition can be assigned referents, or Bedeutungen . And the names that occur in works of fiction, “Odysseus,” for instance, lack Bedeutungen precisely because the statements in which they occur—to take Frege's best-known example, “Odysseus was set ashore at Ithaca while fast asleep” (Geach and Black 1952 : 62)—are fictional. What follows is not that the statements that figure in works of fiction are false, but something rather worse, that these statements are, as it were, dummy statements, incapable of being assigned any truth-value, either true or false.

A further implication of Frege's point is that, along with the notions of truth and falsity, the notions of confirmation and disconfirmation find no foothold in fictional discourse. It would seem to follow that the entire apparatus of rational scrutiny, the kind of scrutiny to which we subject a statement with a view to determining its adequacy as a description of reality (or “the world,” or “the way things stand”), is automatically disabled the moment we pick up a work of literature.

The effect of these arguments is severely to weaken, if not entirely to invalidate, any claim to the effect that literary works might embody any sort of useful or enlightening reflection on the real world, as distinct from the “imagined worlds” that spring from the freedom enjoyed by authors of literary fiction to set, at will, one word after another on a blank sheet of paper. Their tendency is to reserve any actual commerce with reality to putatively factual discourse—the discourse of the sciences, or history. What role does this leave to literature? Plato, on the usual interpretation, at least, credits art with offering us a vision of reality, even if one as inferior to that offered by sensory experience as the latter is inferior to the apprehension of the eternal Forms offered by Reason. The verdict of the empiricist tradition—even less flattering to the poet than Plato's—has tended to be that the business of literature, as indeed of all art, is merely play.

Thomas Hobbes stands at the root of this Renaissance turn in the philosophical critique of literature. He distinguishes four uses of speech:

First, to Register, what by cogitation, we find to be the cause of any thing, present or past; and what we find things present or past may produce, or effect … Secondly, to shew to others that knowledge which we have attained, which is, to Counsell, and Teach one another. Thirdly, to make known to others our wills and purposes, that we may have the mutuall help of one another. Fourthly, to please and delight our selves, and others, by playing with our words, for pleasure or ornament, innocently. (1997: 34:)

Literature, presumably, falls for Hobbes into the fourth category, of “playing with words”: an innocent form of play, perhaps, but as Hobbes (followed later by Locke, and still later by the entire tradition of critical and cultural theory) at once goes on to say, one instinct with all the potential power of subjectively generated illusion to mislead and, in so doing, to alienate us from the sad actuality that we in fact inhabit.

The power of these arguments, issuing as they do from various philosophical traditions, some frankly antiliterary in character, might lead one to suppose that the main opposition to the idea that literature possesses the power to illuminate reality comes from outside literary studies. That would be a mistake. The idea that literature “holds up a mirror to humanity” and its affairs in any sense analogous to that in which a good geological map of the southwestern United States, say, might be said to “hold up a mirror” to the geological history of that region, comes under critical pressure also from arguments that, given that they question the ability of any such story to offer an adequate account of the value of great literature, might be taken to come from within the tradition of literary studies, that is to say, the tradition of reading and valuing great literature as a serious contribution to our culture.

A striking articulation of this problem has recently been provided by R. M. J. Dammann (forthcoming). Consider, to change genres for a moment, a painting by George Stubbs of a racehorse, Whistlejacket, let's say, and its subject, that very horse. Suppose we say that the painting's value as a work of art lies in the relationship of representation between painting and horse. On the one hand, we seem to have replaced one object, the work of art, with two objects, a horse, and some slabs of pigment adhering to a piece of canvas. Still worse, neither of these objects appears to possess any intrinsic aesthetic interest or value. Similarly, suppose we say that the literary value of Othello lies in part in the relationship of representation subsisting between the text of the play and a Venetian general of Moorish extraction. Which general, precisely? Shakespeare's Othello? Or some Othello counterpart presumed to occupy, like Stubbs's subject Whistlejacket, a place among the furniture of nature? If we say the second of these things we replace the single aesthetic object, the text, with two objects: on the one hand, a man; on the other, some words. Now we face again the problem that we faced with the dissolution of Stubbs's painting into a real horse, Whistlejacket, and some equally real patches of oil paint smeared on canvas: neither the words nor the man seem in themselves of any aesthetic interest. But if we take the first course, of saying that the general whose tragedy is represented in Othello is Shakespeare's Othello, then talking of representation has brought us no nearer, it seems, to connecting art and reality, since Shakespeare's Othello is a denizen, not of the (one) real world, but of the “world” of Shakespeare's play.

A closely related point to this one of Dammann's is developed by John Gibson. To the extent that we value literature for what it can teach us about the world, Gibson argues, we move the locus of literary value from the literary to the extraliterary:

We may of course take what we find in a literary text and ask whether it holds true in the real world, whether, if we apply it there, we can acquire a better understanding of worldly affairs. But as soon as we have done this we have left aside literary appreciation and stepped into something more like social science: we are now investigating the world and not the literary work. These questions may be infinitely important to us, …; but they ultimately say nothing about how we experience literary works, and thus they will fail to help us understand the ways in which we can read the literary work of art. (2004: 113)

A further point, common to both Dammann and Gibson, is that literary appreciation, the appreciation of the nature and value of great literature, is exercised entirely about the language of the work. Literature is after all, an art made , wholly and solely, out of language ; an art whose works are created merely by arranging words on a page. We seem, as a culture, to experience difficulty with this thought. A particularly fatuous index of the kind of difficulty we feel has lately been provided by the BBC, which put on a series of “modern versions of Shakespeare plays” that kept the plots and the names of the characters but dropped Shakespeare's language. The thought here—the thought that justifies continuing, absurdly, to call these amusing travesties versions of Shakespeare—seems to be that Shakespeare's language cannot be all his work amounts to, cannot be what constitutes his work, because language is—well, just language. And how can language , the mere deployment of words, considered just in itself, either be considered great —as distinct from, say, resonant, or clever—or for that matter reveal to us anything about anything?

One of the major merits of Lamarque and Olsen's treatment of the topic, also, is their insistence that both literary criticism and our apprehension of the value of literature are exercised about the language, the words, of the literary text, and not about things external to the text to which those words might give access. And I think, moreover, that they are right to see that fact as a further obstacle in the path of those who wish to represent the value of literature as residing in its power either to formulate truths or to “hold up a mirror” to human nature. In any statement that purports to communicate a truth or, to put it more generally, to inform us concerning how things stand in the real world, the language in which it is couched is of value only from the standpoint of communicative efficiency. A given message may be of very great value in that it informs those who read it, let's say, of the sinking of the Titanic . But the value of its language is relative solely to the efficiency with which it serves to communicate that fact. It would be absurd, in such a case, to suggest that intrinsic value resided in the choice of one form of words over another, or that the message would lose its value as a message if any word in it were to be altered. But those are precisely the sorts of things we do say about works of literature. And, since what makes quality of language no more than instrumentally relevant to truth-stating discourse is precisely the relationship in which truth-stating discourse stands to the representation of reality, this does rather suggest that literature lacks, precisely, that—or any analogous—relationship to reality, at least when reality is taken, as it appears we must take it, as something existing independently of, and externally to, language.

It is open to question, though, whether Lamarque and Olsen do not pay too heavy a price for the centrality of this—undoubtedly, at least up to a point, sound—insight to the development of their argument. Forcing too close an analogy between literature and informative, fact-stating discourse undoubtedly makes it difficult, for the reasons just given, to understand why we should ascribe intrinsic value to a literary work, and do so, moreover, in virtue of the quality of its language. It has to be said, however, that to deny literature any relationship whatsoever with reality, as Lamarque and Olsen's “no truth” account does, makes that even more difficult to understand. And that is the direction in which their argument now moves.

Lamarque and Olsen grant, in their chapter “The Mimetic Aspect of Literature,” that literature has such an aspect. It has an aspect of “aboutness.” And what it is “about” are themes . Thus (their example), the theme of Euripides’ Hippolytus is human weakness in the face of forces beyond our control, coupled with the lack of divine purpose. Euripides’ treatment of this theme is built around a number of thematic concepts, “through which the different features of the play are apprehended and related to each other: freedom, determinism, responsibility, weakness of will continence/incontinence, sympathy, guilt, human suffering, divine order, purity, pollution, forgiveness, charity, reconciliation” (1994: 401–2).

The thematic concepts that articulate a work of literature are, however, according to Lamarque and Olsen, “by themselves, vacuous. They cannot be separated from the way they are ‘anatomised’ in literature and other cultural discourses” (1994: 403). It becomes clear in context that a rather strong claim is being floated here, namely, that outside “cultural discourses,” including those of literature, such concepts find no application , find, as Wittgenstein would say, no foothold . Such concepts as “divine order,” “purity,” “forgiveness,” “charity,” say Lamarque and Olsen,

have received a significance over and above that which they have in everyday use through the role which they play in religious belief, ritual and in theological discourse … To point this out is not to suggest that perennial thematic concepts receive their definition in philosophical discourse or through the role they play in religious practice and are then borrowed by the reader of literature who wants to appreciate a work of art. On the contrary, these perennial thematic concepts achieve the importance they have within the culture, and receive their content, both from the role they play in philosophical discourse and religious practice, on the one hand, and, on the other, from the role they play in literary appreciation. (407, emphasis added)

In short, the thematic concepts that supply the content of literature not only are not, but also could not be made, the vehicle of any body of insights concerning the real world, because they have no application to anything “real” in the sense of external to literature and other “cultural practices” loosely associated with literature.

As radical a divorce as this between the concerns of literature and those of everyday life is, clearly, required of Lamarque and Olsen by the contention—central to their “no truth” account of literature—that “whatever the purpose of fiction and literature may be, it is not ‘truth-telling’ in any straightforward sense” (1994: 440). The difficulty it involves them in, however, becomes evident the moment we ask why literary activity, so understood, should be considered valuable. Why should we care about the allegedly “mortal” questions [Thomas Nagel's phrase, borrowed by Lamarque and Olsen] that provide the themes of great literature, or waste time worrying about the “thematic concepts” in terms of which such questions pose themselves, if the concepts in question “receive their content” only from the role they play in literature (and a few other, equally rarefied, “cultural practices”) and otherwise have no bearing on the prosaic fabric of life as it is actually lived outside the covers of books?

It can come as no surprise that Lamarque and Olsen have no answer to this question, except to say, in the penultimate sentences of their book: “These are simply things we care about and always seem to have cared about. And this is where the argument stops” (1994: 456).

It is time for a new start. Let us return to the simple thought that lies somewhere near the root of the philosophical critique, at least in its Renaissance and modern forms: that since authors create literary works simply by arranging words on a page at their own sweet wills, their works cannot teach us anything about reality. Why not?

The reason cannot be that reality is external to the mind of the writer, for that divorce plainly cannot, and does not, prevent the reality of things from being adequately captured in plain, descriptive prose. The problem is rather that reality is, or is held to be, in every sense, external to language . That thought is implicit in Hobbes's typically pregnant aphorism, “For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fooles” (1997: 37). The gist of that remark is that words have no meaning that is not derived from correspondence with some item or aspect of extralinguistic reality. It follows that words can, by their arrangement into sentences, compose statements capable of capturing reality, only if their arrangement is dictated by reality , not if it is dictated by the will of the author. Truthful discourse is discourse transcribed from nature. To abandon the hard work of transcription from nature, and instead to arrange what are, after all, so used, mere “counters,” into sentences at will is therefore merely, as Hobbes says, to play with words, like a child, “for pleasure and ornament, innocently” (1997: 34).

On such a view of language, language has no grip on, no commerce with, reality, internal to itself. Its commerce with reality is a purely external commerce, conducted via the conventional association of basic terms or sentences with elements of the world; in recent philosophy, for example, Bertrand Russell's individuals, universals, and relations, or W. V. O. Quine's collections of “stimuli.”

Is that true? Has language really no inward, internal, commerce with reality? A very powerful and popular argument against saying that it has any such thing is that such talk must lead immediately to linguistic idealism, the thesis that the way we choose to speak has the power to create the reality of which we speak. Taking that route appears to sever all connection between the way we talk and the way things are. Nothing created more animus against the late Jacques Derrida, among English-speaking philosophers, than the latter's remark Il n'y a pas d'horstexte , interpreted, at least in the anglophone philosophical world, as conveying the proposition that there is no such thing as an extralinguistic world against which to measure the success of our attempts to convey its nature in language. Whether or not such an interpretation is fair to Derrida (see Harrison 1985 , 1991 : 123–43), which is quite another matter, there can be no doubt that the position with which it saddles him is a deeply unattractive one. After all, the connection with reality that language seems most paradigmatically to possess, at least in the sciences, runs precisely by way of procedures that are, in an obvious sense, external to itself: measurement of, and experimentation on, the materially real. I would not wish to go down any path of argument that terminated in a denial of the possibility of that type of entirely external, relationship between language and reality. But is there any other path down which one can go, starting from the thought that language has, or might have, an internal relationship to reality, instead of, or possibly as well as, a merely external one?

I think there is. It is the path hacked out by Patricia Hanna and me in Word and World: Practice and the Foundations of Language (2004).

One of the central arguments of that book goes, in brief, like this. Frege taught us, among much else, that meaning in a natural language is primarily to be understood in terms of the notions of truth and falsity, and that the prime locus of meaning is, therefore, the statement—in linguistic terms, the sentence. A grasp of the concept of meaning in a natural language therefore requires a grasp of the concept of the assertoric or, to put it less tersely, of what it is for a linguistic expression to assert something , to be the vehicle of an assertoric content —to be, in other words, a suitable candidate for the ascription of the predicates “ … is true” and “ … is false.”

How is the concept of the assertoric to be acquired, or taught? There is, clearly, nothing assertoric to be encountered in the natural world. Assertoricity, if one may speak in that way, is a property not of lakes, trees, or mountains but of linguistic expressions. What it is for such an expression to be assertoric in character has thus to be specified, to be stipulated, if the notion is to get off the ground.

How is that to be done? To explain what it is for a linguistic expression to assert something, to possess assertoric content, is, presumably, to explain its relationship to the conditions that make it true or false. It is tempting to suppose that we might do this, for the statement S expressed by a given sentence å, by listing, first, some things or circumstances of which S might be truly asserted and, second, some of which it would be false to assert S. This would be a mistake. Someone who grasps what assertoric content is expressed by a sentence å is capable, in virtue of that grasp, to extend indefinitely both the list of things or circumstances of which it would be true to assert the corresponding statement S (call this the T-list) and the list of those of which it would be false to assert S (call this the F-list). From a finite number of items on either list, however, no continuation of the list can be confidently inferred. If I am shown, for example, a finite array of objects of which I am told only that the statement expressed by an English sentence å of the form “X is three inches long” is true of each and every one of them, then I am plainly in no position to add a new object to the array, since I have as yet no idea what assertoric content, that is to say, what statement, S, is expressed by å, and hence no means of knowing which of the multifarious similarities exhibited by the objects in the array are to be treated as relevant to the truth of S, and which are not. And similarly for any finite array of items presented as exemplifying the class of objects of which it would be false to assert the statement expressed by å.

Plainly, there is something that the learner still needs to grasp and does not: something that, if he were to grasp it, would allow him to extend either array with confidence. What could that be? Rather evidently, I suggest, what the learner needs, somehow, to grasp is that the statement expressed by a sentence of the form of å is a statement of spatial dimension , to be precise, of length . If he were to grasp that, he would see how the T-list and the F-list are related to one another. He would grasp that an object belongs in the T-list if its greatest linear dimension has a certain value, but is to be transferred from the T-list to the F-list if its greatest linear dimension has any other value. Grasping that, he would grasp how to set about extending either list in a manner consistent with the principles on which it was constituted in the first place.

But how is the learner to be brought to grasp that the sentence expressed by a sentence of the form of å is a statement of linear dimension? We have already seen that there is no way in which we could bring him to that understanding by showing him how to relate sentences of that form directly to classes of natural objects. The only other possibility is that we show him how sentences of that form are related to a certain human practice, namely, the practice of measuring . He needs to learn that measurement institutes a standardized system for comparing objects with one another. Our systems of linear measurement, I take it, are built up from the basic idea of taking a small, straight-edged object, M, and seeing how many end-over-end applications of that object it takes to span one edge of a larger straight-edged object, O. The practical utilities of this idea are many. An obvious initial one is that it offers a way of finding out whether a heavy object will fit into a given space, without actually having to move it. The small object M may now become standard in such operations: people in the Musing community begin to ask questions like, “How many M's long must a stone be to fit this space?” Then some unusually astute Muser sees that the business of ascertaining the answers to such questions would be easier if one were to take a rod and mark it out in divisions, each a single iteration of M in length, by applying the object M successively to the rod. “Here”—he says—“I have made an M-stick: use that.” As M-stick use spreads and acquires other practical uses—in the measurement of plots of land, say, people begin to need words for what they are doing in measuring. First, they give a name to the length of M: they call it, let's say, “an inch.” Then they introduce a word that describes the way in which the object M functioned, and continues to function, in their practice of linear measurement. They begin to say that M served, and serves, them as a modulus of measurement .

How is the learner helped, by being thus taught, in practice, what measuring is, and how to set about measuring? The problem he faced, remember, was that of discerning any relationship between the items composing the T-list and those composing the F-list. He needed, somehow, to grasp that the true and the false are not different things , but rather different aspects of the same thing, namely, an assertion . He needed to see that it is precisely the assertoric content of a statement which makes it both true of some things and false of others.

This is the difficulty that is resolved for the learner when, as Wittgenstein puts it, he sees, through learning the practice and the point of measurement, “the post at which we station” (1958: 14e) a sentence like “This is three inches long” relative to the practice. The practice gives him access to a procedure, measuring, by appeal to which he can himself determine whether a given item is to be placed in the T-series or the F-series. He thus sees what it is for the expression “This is three inches long” to be assertoric in form, to convey an assertion, for the essence of what it is to be an assertion is precisely that an assertion can be either true or false.

The moral of this story is, of course, that if meaning in natural languages is, as Frege thought, essentially connected with truth and falsity, and thus with the concept of the assertoric, then the meaning of an expression cannot be explained merely by correlating it with some item or aspect of the sensible world. Words are not, as Hobbes thought, merely “counters” by means of which we represent to ourselves the things, “out there” in the world, for which they have been conventionally assigned to stand. On the contrary, the meanings of words are determined internally to language—or better, perhaps, internally to practice . Think, for instance, of the ways in which the terms “inch” and “modulus” acquire their meanings in the context of the simple system of linear measurement just discussed. “Inch” is just the name we use for the distance between each mark and the next on the yardstick we make by marking up a rod using the object M. “Modulus” is just the name we give to any object, such as M, used in this sort of way. There is clearly no way, for reasons we have already adduced, in which the meanings of these terms could be explained by ostensively associating the terms with any element of the extralinguistic world. Talk of their meanings is equivalent to, simply amounts to, talk of their relationship to the practice of measurement—to the socially devised and maintained device, the language game, as Wittgenstein would say, in which they find a use.

Does that mean that, since such concepts as “measurement,” “modulus of measurement,” “length” are not simply markers for prelinguistically existing features of extralinguistic reality (“counters,” as Hobbes put it), there can be no possibility of using the corresponding words to frame sentences capable of expressing true statements—statements correctly informing us about how things stand in the extralinguistic world? Plainly not. The statement expressed by the sentence “This book measures six inches by nine inches,” uttered with reference to a particular book, manifestly admits either of being true or of being false, and which it happens to be can be easily determined by measuring the book. For it to be possible to use language to say how things stand, or fail to stand, in the extralinguistic world, it is indeed necessary that some relationship should subsist between language and the extralinguistic. But (1) the relationship in question need not necessarily run between elements of language (words, sentences, e.g.), on the one hand, and elements of “reality” (individuals, universals, relations, collections of “stimuli”), on the other. On the contrary, it may, and does, run by way of the relationship between practices and the natural circumstances in which their operations find a foothold, or to put it another way, with which those operations engage. And (2) it need not be identified with the relationship or relationships that determine the meanings of linguistic expressions. On our account, that job is done by the relationships subsisting between linguistic expressions and the practices in the context of which they find a use. What Hanna and I are suggesting in Word and World , in effect, is that we should cease identifying what serves to establish the meanings of linguistic expressions with what connects language in general with extralinguistic references existing apart from human practices. Without language, we would still, in a certain sense, “possess concepts.” But since, as alinguistic beings, we would be restricted, like animals, to sensual and bodily interaction with the world, such concepts as would remain accessible to us would be concepts only in the rather limited sense of “concept” exemplified by psychological experiments on “concept formation,” which in effect concern merely the ability of animals to respond differentially to recurrent patterns of stimulation. The complex interactions, on the one hand, between linguistic expressions and the practices—measurement, for instance—in terms of which we interrogate reality and, on the other, between the latter and the natural features of the world that determine difference of outcome for their operations, equip us with the linked notions of “truth,” “falsity,” and “assertion,” and thus with concepts in the full, language-presupposing, sense of the term , that is to say, notions that cannot be entertained without ramifying instantly into a fan of possibilities of sentential occurrence, because to grasp the possibility of using a concept (in the full, language-presupposing sense) in the framing of assertions is (again, in that, full, sense) just what it is to grasp, to possess, a concept.

The utility for present purposes of the possibility just outlined of thinking about meaning, and about the relationship of language to the extralinguistic, is that it gives us a way of crediting language with a semantic, as well as a syntactic, “interior.” The semantic interior of language, on the present view, is constituted by the multifarious interactions of linguistic expressions with the practices in terms of which we interrogate extralinguistic reality.

What sent us down this path, however, was the hope that we might discover some sense in which language might be said to have an internal, as well as an external, relationship to reality. And the argument, which might seem to have left us as far from that goal as ever, states, in effect, that the relationship between language and the extralinguistic runs not by way of the connection of elements of language (words, sentences) with anything simply given , independently of practices, but rather by way of the establishment, through the operation of the practices in relationship to which elements of language take on meaning, of binary sets of options between which reality can be forced, as it were, to determine a choice, and thus a distinction between the true and the false. If this is right, the connection between language and the extralinguistic runs by way of assertion. And that, it seems, leaves the poet, who as Sir Philip Sidney put it, “nothing affirmeth” (2004: 34) and the writer of fiction, who characteristically makes no assertions about anything outside the “world” of his fiction, still lacking a grip on anything worth calling reality.

But wait—there is one more level of complexity to come. So far, I have been arguing that the involvement of words in practices is necessary to establish the nature of the connection between what is affirmed and what is denied in asserting the truth (or the falsehood) of a given statement. If the argument stands, the involvement of words in practices is what gives us access to the linked notions of truth, falsity, and the assertoric. Seen from that point of view, the function of the internal machinery of language—the machinery constituted by linguistic expressions taken together with their functional modes of insertion into practices of one sort and another—is to make it possible for us to capture, in terms of the truth or falsity of propositions, the nature of a world—the natural world—which is indeed wholly external to language.

There is, however, a second way in which the creation of practices that are in part linguistic in nature bears on our relationship to reality. In the very act of creating the varied practices that found the possibility of propositionally formulated knowledge of the world external to language, we also constitute a second, nonnatural world: the human world , a world as real as the natural world—the world wholly external to language—but this time a world partly internal to language. Consider, once more, the practice of linear measurement, with its associated notions of “modulus,” “length,” “measuring rod,” and so on. For a society to have access to a commonly understood practice of that kind renders accessible possibilities of social organization, and with them, patterns of feeling, interest, and self-description, that are not accessible to a society without such a practice. It becomes possible to measure land and goods accurately, for instance, and to make exact comparisons of the sizes of fields, or pieces of cloth, say, for purposes of sale, exchange, or inheritance. Such practices very rapidly acquire a moral dimension. Accuracy in measurement very soon becomes one of the parameters of honesty. The merchant or trader who gives good measure is an honest man; one whose instruments of measurement have been in some way corrupted or falsified in his own interest, the opposite. Many preindustrial societies have reached the point of having market officials whose duty is to check the accuracy of measuring implements used in commerce: scales, weights, measuring vessels, measuring rods, and so on. It is easy, too, for the connection between accuracy in measurement and honesty to take on a wider moral relevance, so that people begin to think of the moral life itself as, crucially, a matter of observing limits, and of moral intelligence as accuracy in the measurement of the points at which the free exercise of personal choice ends and moral license begins. Out of these ways of thinking are born further practices, including law, that are essentially moral in character: at one and the same time ways of conducting life and also resulting patterns of feeling and response to the events of life, which come to surround our original, purely utilitarian practices of measurement. Such moral practices give rise, in turn, to habits of response and corresponding traits of character of the sort immemorially honored with the name of virtues. One such, comparatively little honored among us nowadays, is the practice of refusing, and the corresponding capacity to refuse, an unmeasured response to the invitations of sexuality. Another is the practice of refusing, and the capacity to refuse, an unmeasured response, not only to appetite, but also to such essentially unmeasured emotions as anger, including righteous anger. New collections of terms define themselves through their relationships to these practices, for example, “chastity,” temperance,” “a short fuse,” and “self-control.” To these we may add also, since virtues have a tendency to mutate into vices, and vice versa, as circumstances present one or another aspect of themselves, such expressions as “spontaneity,” “decisiveness,” “strait-laced,” and “cold-blooded.”

Now for several general points about this situation. A society for which measure is a central moral notion, governing a whole family of subordinate moral notions, is a certain sort of society in which certain rather specific sorts of character will predominate and certain rather specific sorts of tension and dilemma be felt and experienced. That the society in question is this way is, I take it, a reality . That it is a society of that specific type, in other words, conducted by persons of a certain corresponding range of characters and personality types, has as much right to be regarded as a real feature of the world, as part of the “furniture of reality,” as some equally salient natural fact, as that the rate of acceleration for a body in free fall near the surface of the earth is approximately 32 feet per second per second. The facts about how a given sort of society works, what possibilities of choice (“living options,” as William James would say [1954: 89]) it offers its members, and what sort of people they become through having been brought up to inhabit it, are not natural facts, in the sense that the workings of the law of gravity or the structure and physiology of the human body are natural facts. Rather, they are facts brought into being through the invention and adoption by human beings of certain specific practices. The society dominated by those practices inhabits, I want to say, a certain human world or, to give a new sense to a term that both Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty use in related, though different senses, a Lebenswelt .

The relationship in which language stands to the reality constituted by a Lebenswelt is, I want to say, different from the relationship in which it stands to the nonhuman, the natural world. The natural world is in no sense constituted by the practices, of linear measurement, for instance, through which we gain access to the possibility of describing it in propositional terms. A given human world, a Lebenswelt , however, is constituted by the very practices in connection with which a range of associated terms and conceptual distinctions take on meaning. In the case of the human world, or worlds, therefore, the reality of how things stand, and the possibilities we possess of saying how things stand, possess a common root in the practices constitutive of that reality. We have what we were looking for: a department of reality that, because the practices that constitute it constitute simultaneously —as it were, in the very act of constituting it—a specific, associated body of language, of terms with specific meanings, enshrining specific conceptual distinctions, actually does stand in internal relationship to language.

But how, in practice, does that help, if it does, when it comes to the question of how, if at all, literature can, at times, offer its readers cognitive gains?

It will be best, I think, to arrive at the general answer I want to give to that question by way of a specific and concrete example. Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure suggests itself in that role, not least because its language connects it with the kind of examples we have just been discussing. The plot of Measure for Measure is simple enough. Vincentio, Duke of Vienna, wishes to restrain the increasing sexual license of the city, whose strict laws against such license have not for some time been enforced. But he does not himself wish to enforce those laws, since having himself allowed them to lapse, he fears to be accused of tyranny if he now has people punished for conduct that he himself allowed to become acceptable. He therefore announces that he will make a long journey, and leaves as his deputy Angelo, a man with a reputation for rigid moral rectitude and sexual purity. In his absence, Claudio, a young gentleman, is arrested for getting with child his betrothed, but as yet unespoused, sweetheart Julia. Claudio is duly sentenced to death by Angelo, that being the penalty for fornication strictly prescribed by the laws of Vienna. Lucio, Claudio's brothel-haunting friend, approaches Claudio's sister Isabella, a postulant nun whose chastity is as renowned as Angelo's, to appeal to the latter for Claudio's life. Her appeal fails, at least on its own terms, but produces the unintended result that Angelo is suddenly seized with desire for her and offers to spare her brother's life if she will sleep with him. She is appalled and refuses. Fortunately, however, the Duke, who set these events in motion, has not left Vienna but has remained there, disguised as a friar, supposedly traveling with a papal commission. The Duke turns the tables on Angelo, by arranging for Angelo's former betrothed Marianna, who has been rejected by Angelo for lack of a dowry, to take the place of Isabella in the sexual encounter with Angelo that Isabella has arranged. Angelo, supposing himself to have slept with Isabella, nevertheless reneges on the deal by ordering Claudio's execution. This plan, too, is thwarted by the Duke, who finally reappears and reestablishes order.

In one sense, the plot, thus baldly summarized, is an operatic farrago. The characters, similarly, are pure invention. It would seem, then, that the play can tell us nothing about what we are ordinarily inclined to term “the real world”—nothing about the sociology or politics of Renaissance Europe, for example; nothing, either, about “human nature,” in the sense of the subject matter of psychology. It may be that the character of Angelo is a rather well-drawn instance of a certain type of anal-obsessive puritan, but even if that were so, it is difficult to see, following Dammann and Gibson, how Shakespeare's success in “representing” a certain sort of puritan character could be relevant to the literary value of the play. But in that case, what is relevant to the literary value of the play? Shakespeare scholars, echoed by several centuries’ worth of common readers, will reply with one great voice: Shakespeare's language! But what exactly is that answer worth? What, for a start, is one saying when one says that it is the language of the play that constitutes its value? Is one saying more than that Shakespeare has the gift of creating highly decorative, though entirely uninformative, skeins of words?

It depends what one means by “uninformative.” In one sense, indeed, Frege is not mocked. No intelligent reader or hearer of Measure for Measure has ever, I suppose, been seriously tempted to assess for truth any of the sentences that occur in the text. Rather, readers or auditors of the play assess what they read, or hear spoken, for meaning . If the meaning of a word could be identified, as so many philosophers have supposed, with some aspect or feature of the natural world, that is to say, of a domain of reality altogether external to language, then assessment for meaning would be a pointless proceeding, unless its object were simply to determine what, if anything, a given statement asserts concerning that domain. But I have argued that this is not a viable account of language and proposed an alternative, broadly Wittgensteinian one, according to which to attend to what is written or uttered from the point of view of its meaning is to attend to it from the point of view of the foothold that specific words and sentences find in practices, practices that in turn determine in part the shape of a human world, which in turn determines in part the sort of beings we, the inhabitants of that world, have become through living in it, and the kind of dilemmas we face in consequence. When language is used in the ordinary, assertoric way, it neither invites nor allows us to pay much regard to the constitution of the human world our practices have created for us, because the functions of the apparatus of assertion, truth, and falsity, even when what is at issue are statements—historical or sociological ones—for instance, concerning the workings of one or another human world, can be brought into play only insofar as the subject matter of the statements addressed can be considered independently of any intrinsic relationship in which that subject matter may, at some level, stand to language. Therefore, to bring before us the consequences, in terms of our situation, of the ways in which our practices have devised for us a specific kind of world, the human world, whose nature determines the scope and boundaries of what for us counts as a human life, a tradition of using language nonassertorically is required. That tradition is what we call literature. The poet “nothing affirmeth,” as Sidney observed, because if he were to affirm anything he would not be a poet; he would be a deviser of versified philosophy, like Lucretius, or of versified sermons, like the Victorian poet Martin Tupper. It is only by speaking nonassertorically that he can perform his proper function of showing , rather than asserting, what the founding practices of the particular human world that we and he inhabit, have made, and make, of us, its inhabitants.

The title of Measure for Measure announces the central theme of the play: the balancing of moral debts. The words invoke not only the prosaic practices of linear and volumetric measurement and their uses in commerce, in which the various meanings of the term “measure” originates, but also the extension of that term into the description of morals: “measured response,” “measured words,” “just—or fair—measure” for instance. The play of meanings here equally immediately invokes the opposite of measure, the unmeasured, that which presses continually against socially contrived boundaries, in the present case, sexual appetite. What the play does, in effect, is explore a range of different responses to this conflict. It does so through the creation of characters. The characters of the play have, clearly, no reference outside the play. Shakespeare is plainly not concerned to offer us a “portrait” of a typical Viennese gentleman of the period, in the way that an Edwardian novelist like Arnold Bennett was concerned to offer his readers “portraits” of typical inhabitants of the Five Towns in, say, 1905. Shakespeare's characters are no more than the situation assigned to them by the plot plus the words Shakespeare puts in their mouths. Nevertheless, as a very long tradition of response, emanating from scholars and common readers alike, assures us, they “live,” they are “real.” What people who respond in that way are responding to , I want to suggest, is the manner in which the words Shakespeare gives his characters invoke features of a human world we share with them, which link our situation to theirs, allowing the emotions associated with the pressures of that common situation to flood from us into them, in such a way, that, viewed in them as in a glass (for the specular metaphor has always possessed a certain intuitive force, which it retains in this connection and to this extent), our own situation as inhabitants of, and as the bearers of natures formed by the pressures of, a certain human world becomes in certain respects clearer to us, because surveyable as a whole.

Thus, Claudius, ruefully reflecting to his friend Lucio on the errors that have led to his imprisonment, answers Lucio's question “whence comes this restraint” with the words,

From too much liberty, my Lucio. Liberty, As surfeit, is the father of much fast; So every scope, by the immoderate use Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die. (2001: I, 2, 11. 113–18)

As with the word “measure” in the title, the words of this brief speech carry with them their modes of insertion in one or more of the many patterns of practice that can frame a human life and, with that, the meanings of contrasting terms. We speak of “surfeit” because we need a word for eating carried to an extreme that produces illness. We need that word because it is in fact possible to make ourselves ill by gorging. The speech simply brings before us the evident possibility that giving unlimited scope to our appetites may result in the loss of our power to satisfy them. We are like rats, says Claudius, that rat poison has made ravenously thirsty but that has also ensured that to drink is death. In a sense, we learn nothing new from this—we knew already what “surfeit” and “ravin” mean: if we had not, we could not have understood the speech. What the speech and the bitter metaphor of the dying rat give the reader or auditor, however, is a sudden sharp sense of what, in another sense of “means,” it means to have destroyed one's life by giving one's appetites unlimited rein. By the mere force of the words Shakespeare has given him, their power, that is to say, to make familiar relationships rise up before us in a form made newly urgent by the terms of the plot, the nature of Claudio's situation becomes so sharply present that the emotions his words express, of bitter regret and self-blame, become suddenly real to the reader or auditor as well.

As with Claudius, so with the other characters. Each occupies a different situation with respect to the basic dilemma we—and not only Shakespeare's characters—face as beings of potentially unmeasured appetite who also live, and on the whole wish to live, by the light of practices, monogamous marriage, religious chastity, law itself, which all enshrine some concept of measure or boundary. The play offers no advice, no solution to the difficulties we encounter in attempting to square these moral circles. The moral rigorism of Angelo comes indeed to grief, the law he is committed to enforce turning in his hands into a tyranny that reflects the tyranny of his own sexual appetites. In a related way, the moral rigorism of Isabella's chastity stands compromised by its incompatibility with charity toward her brother. But the play's representatives of moral permissiveness, the “fantastick” Lucio and his entourage of pimps, whores, and bravos, fare no better. The Duke's restoration of order in the final scene amounts really to no more than the evasion of a series of impossible choices by means of ad hoc decisions. What, then, have we learned from the play? We have learned, by being given a certain sort of guided tour of certain aspects of a particular human world, a world that we, like Shakespeare's characters, in part continue to inhabit, that the topography of that world is more complex than we might have supposed. We have, in learning that, I suggest, learned something about reality—not, of course, the reality of the natural world, the world altogether outside language; rather, the reality of our world: the—or rather, one possible—human world.

Let me sum up by returning briefly to the questions with which the chapter began. Literature is not about the “real world” in the sense of the natural world, the world wholly external to language. But that does not mean that literature, including great literature, necessarily concerns fantasy worlds, worlds made up out of whole cloth, worlds conjured out of the fancy, the mere subjectivity, of one or another writer, in the interests, as Hobbes thought, of amusement or play. Fiction can work like that and serve those ends, but that doesn't have to be all there is to it. The “subjectivity” that characterizes the best literature is like the subjectivity that characterizes the work of the best scientists: a subjectivity of personal voice and style only. What, on the other hand, the best literary work, like the best scientific work, is actually concerned with is not the “subjectivity” of the writer or, for that matter, of the scientist, but rather reality, the “real world,” only, in the case of the former, the department of reality it addresses is not the natural world but the—or a—human world, and the latter considered rather from the standpoint of its constitution, of its roots in praxis , rather from the standpoint of its status as subject matter of contingent assertions, true or false.

It is possible to have an art of this kind, an art that is made simply by arranging words on a page, and yet that, at its occasional best, addresses realities, because the realities in question are accessible via the assessment of language for meaning, rather than for truth. They are accessible by this route because the meanings of words are determined by the relationships in which words stand to the practices that in part constitute the realities of a given human world.

Putting things in this way gives the present account, finally, a new grip on those questions of value that turn out, as we saw above, to be inseparable from the question of literary realism. We have come out, in the end, in agreement with the central tenet of Lamarque and Olsen's “no truth” account of literature: great literature asserts nothing , either false or true. But we can avoid the conclusion they draw from this thought, namely, that the concepts and themes deployed in literature and other “cultural practices” derive their content internally to such practices and therefore have no foothold in, or relevance to, the prosaic affairs of everyday life, by suggesting, in effect, that “cultural practices,” far from being something added on to the “everyday life” of human beings, an optional extra, as it were, are, on the contrary, main contributors to the constitution of the terms on which any such life is available to be led.

That explains why so many have rightly supposed great literature to be in intimate connection with other aspects of the life we lead. It explains, among other things, how it is that, through reading it, we may be led to all sorts of insights, including, as I have argued elsewhere (see Harrison 1975 , 1991 , 2001 , 2004 , 2006), philosophical insights that we are unlikely to have stumbled upon otherwise and that can perfectly well be expressed in indicative statements capable of being assigned a truth-value. That such possibilities exist goes far to explain, I think, why so many minds are so reluctant to abandon the idea that great literature can instruct, can be a source of truths, despite the evident force of the type of counterargument to that claim assembled by writers like Lamarque and Olsen.

Many of the concepts and conceptual distinctions whose ramifications are displayed by great writers—the sort that Lamarque and Olsen call “thematic concepts”—are moral concepts, and philosophers such as Richard Eldridge ( 1989 ) and Martha Nussbaum ( 1986 and 1990 ) have begun to take seriously the idea that some of the problems of moral philosophy might be more fruitfully addressed by making literature and literary studies active partners, as it were, in philosophical enquiry. At one point Lamarque and Olsen dismiss this tendency in the following terms:

[Eldridge] argues as if literature provided answers to serious questions that we have to address in our own lives, questions that exist for us independently of the existence of literary practice. The trouble with this type of defence from our point of view is that it demands a concept of what may be called “true-versions” of themes that we have argued in detail cannot be sustained in any substantive form. (1994: 451)

The view proposed here makes it clear, I think, why the programs of philosophers like Eldridge and Nussbaum require no such theoretical underpinning: because the “themes” dealt with in great literature are in fact deeply rooted in “our own lives,” not through the (admittedly nonexistent) possibility of assigning truth-values to the content of literary works, but through their roots in the practices and forms of life which simultaneously (1) determine the content of the concepts in question and (2) constitute the moral framework of whatever human world it is in which our everyday lives are led. In other words, there is simply no such breach as Lamarque and Olsen postulate between the concerns of everyday life and those of literature.

But it also follows, from the position set out here, that the value of great literature does not, as we found Gibson and Dammann rightly insisting, consist in the possibility of being guided by it to such truth-assessable insights as may be derived from reading and reflecting upon it. According to us the power, and the value, of great literature is, just as Gibson and Dammann argue, internal to it, because it resides in the power of its medium, language, to summon up and display—for here the metaphor of mimesis revives and recovers a good deal of the force ascribed to it by writers like Nuttall—through its deployment in the medium of a fiction, the nature of the human practices and choices that found the conceptual distinctions it enshrines, and that simultaneously found, along with them, a world, one that is not only the world in which we live, but a world, and its founding words, made flesh in us: the world that exists only in us, the world of whose values and assumptions we are the living bearers, and that is not, moreover, a static world, but a world constantly in a slow, glacier-like flux of change, one of the motivating forces of which, of course, is great literature. That is why great literature is, or should be, important to us.

That thought suggests a return to our starting point, in the notion of realism as a genre concept. Realism as a genre is, for many literary historians, conterminous with the brief reign of the nineteenth-century realist novel, and passes from the scene with the rise of literary modernism, in the work of such writers as Kafka, Proust, Joyce, Woolf, or Eliot.

The revolutionary character of modernism in literature, as in other arts, is often taken to consist in two main characteristics, both involving a crisis of authority. On the one hand, it is said, modernist writers are painfully aware that, since the book is “only a book and not the world” (Josipovici 1977 : 113), and since the claim to capture reality in a fiction is a grandiloquent pretense, the writer cannot rely on reality to authorize what he writes. On the other hand, the recognition by modernists that traditional literary forms and rules of composition are “man-made and not natural” (122), it is claimed, destroys the authority of past literary practice. That double lapse of authority leaves the modernist writer, when it comes to deciding what to write down upon the blank page confronting him, in that state of absolute freedom, at once liberating and angst ridden, that the existentialist tradition, from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche onward, has made it its business to explore.

One way of responding to this situation is to argue, with Gabriel Josipovici (echoing Hobbes, in the passage from Leviathan cited above), that it gives to literature, as to art in general, “a greater sense of game, of playfulness, than ha[s] ever been known since the dawn of the Renaissance” (1977: 122). But—and here is the rub—such a stance leaves room for two darker responses: first, that it is a short step from playfulness to frivolity—to an art that no longer functions either as a transmitter or as a critic of cultural stances and values because it has subsided into the self-absorbed pursuit of purely formal “experiments”; and second, that of Thomas Mann in Doctor Faustus , that modernism in art, in its surrender of all cultural authority in favor of the naked will of the artist, has a demonic side, a side not without connections, for Mann, with the rise of Nazism.

If the position I have outlined here stands, however, the latter two, pessimistic, responses have rather less to be said for them than might otherwise appear. On the view suggested here, the negative part of the case for modernism advanced by Josipovici and others is sound enough. It is indeed not the business of literature to “describe reality”—even human reality—in the sense in which a true, literal, indicative statement “describes reality.” No doubt, also, all questions of literary form and technique do indeed fall to the will of the writer to determine. But if we are right, it does not follow that literature is a free field for “play” in the sense of frivolity , for the connection between literature and reality does not run by way of the truth or falsity of statements, but by way of deeper linkages, internal to language, between the meanings of words and the practices that constitute human worlds and form the outlook and personalities of their inhabitants. To “play” with these connections, to bring them to consciousness, to criticize them, at times to transform them, is indeed the business of serious literature, including modernist literature. But the “play” in question is serious play, since it affords us one of the few means we have of rising above our habitual acquiescence in the vast fabric of historically accumulated practice, in and through which we live our lives, to a position from which we can, in principle at least, contemplate with a serious eye what that fabric has made, and continues to make, of us.

Auerbach, E. ( 1957 ). Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (W. Trask, trans.). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor. (Original work published 1946).

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Realism and Naturalism

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Realism and Naturalism by John Dudley LAST REVIEWED: 29 August 2012 LAST MODIFIED: 29 August 2012 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0059

Variously defined as distinct philosophical approaches, complementary aesthetic strategies, or broad literary movements, realism and naturalism emerged as the dominant categories applied to American fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Included under the broad umbrella of realism are a diverse set of authors, including Henry James, W. D. Howells, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, George Washington Cable, Rebecca Harding Davis, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Hamlin Garland. Often categorized as regionalists or local colorists, many of these writers produced work that emphasized geographically distinct dialects and customs. Others offered satirical fiction or novels of manners that exposed the excesses, hypocrisies, or shortcomings of a culture undergoing radical social change. A subsequent generation of writers, including Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, and Jack London, are most often cited as the American inheritors of the naturalist approach practiced by Emile Zola, whose 1880 treatise Le Roman Experimental applied the experimental methods of medical science to the construction of the novel. Governed by a combination of heredity, environment, and chance, the typical characters of naturalist fiction find themselves constrained from achieving the transcendent goals suggested by a false ideology of romantic individualism. Over the past century, critics and literary historians have alternately viewed realist and naturalist texts as explicit condemnations of the economic, cultural, or ethical deficiencies of the industrialized age or as representations of the very ideological forces they purport to critique. Accordingly, an exploration of these texts raises important questions about the relationship between literature and society, and about our understanding of the “real” or the “natural” as cultural and literary phenomena. Though of little regard in the wake of the New Critics’ emphasis on metaphysics and formal innovation, a revived interest in realism as the American adaptation of an international movement aligned with egalitarian and democratic ideology emerged in the 1960s, as did an effort to redefine naturalist fiction as a more complex form belonging to the broader mainstream of American literary history. More recently, the emergence of deconstructive, Marxist, and new historicist criticism in the 1980s afforded a revised, and often skeptical, reevaluation of realism and naturalism as more conflicted forms, itself defined or constructed by hegemonic forces and offering insight into late-19th- and early-20th-century ideologies of class, race, and gender.

In the wake of Parrington’s attempt to reconcile the rise of realism and naturalism with an essentially romantic tradition ( Parrington 1930 ), interest in the rise of these movements has occurred in waves. In particular, efforts to provide large-scale summaries reflect the attention to social problems in 1960s, and the influence of—and reaction to—post-structuralism and cultural criticism in the 1980s. In all cases, however, comprehensive hypotheses about the nature of realism and naturalism remain grounded, to a large extent, in the political, economic, and cultural history of the late 19th century. Berthoff 1965 , Pizer 1984 , and Lehan 2005 represent attempts to accommodate the horizons established by Parrington’s definition of the study of literary form. Kaplan 1988 , Borus 1989 , and Bell 1993 each make valuable contributions to the new historicist reexamination of naturalism. Murphy 1987 offers one of the few comprehensive accounts of realism within dramatic literature.

Bell, Michael Davitt. The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Provides compelling readings of the canonical authors, suggesting little common ground beyond the fact that both realism and naturalism explicitly reject the conventional dictates of artistry and dominant notions of style. Unified in their attraction to “reality” as an abstraction, Howells, Twain, James, Norris, Crane, Dreiser, and Jewett each constructed radically unique responses to a common “revolt against style” (p. 115)

Berthoff, Warner. The Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884–1919 . New York: Free Press, 1965.

Suggests that realism as a category may be best understood though an examination of practice, rather than through the study of principles or theories. In this light, establishes forceful reading of realist novels as varied statements of outrage and opposition to the increasing materialism, disorder, and perceived moral decay in the years leading up to World War I.

Borus, Daniel H. Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Draws on concerns of new historicism, yet emphasizes the process of literary publication and reception itself. Explores Howells, James, and Norris in detail, with some attention to other writers, including compelling discussions of the publishing industry, literary celebrity, and rise of the political novel.

Kaplan, Amy. The Social Construction of American Realism . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Includes a concise summary of earlier critical debates about realism (including and subsuming naturalism) and describes the cultural work in novels of Howells, Wharton, and Dreiser to construct social spaces that contain and defuse class tensions emerging in the late 19th century. Among the more influential new historicist interventions.

Lehan, Richard Daniel. Realism and Naturalism: The Novel in an Age of Transition . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.

Resolutely formalist overview of realism and naturalism as literary modes. Describes the philosophical and cultural assumptions that helped shape these movements and traces their development throughout the 20th century. At times polemical in its dismissal of post-structuralist or materialist rereadings (see, for example, Kaplan 1988 ; Howard 1985 or Michaels 1987 , both cited under Philosophy, History, and Form ), nonetheless immensely useful and readable synthesis of key ideas.

Murphy, Brenda. American Realism and American Drama, 1880–1940 . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

A treatment of realism in American theater, tracing the development of realist ideas about dramatic representation and their subsequent influence on American dramatists of the 20th century, including Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, and others. Addresses the scant attention paid to the theater in the scholarship on realism.

Parrington, Vernon Louis. The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, 1860–1920 . Vol. 3, Main Currents in American Thought . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1930.

Though left incomplete at Parrington’s death, offers what would become the dominant view of realism and naturalism for much subsequent criticism. Sees these movements as antitheses of idealism represented by the Emersonian tradition, providing a needed corrective to “shoddy romanticism” that threatened to consume the American literary tradition.

Pizer, Donald. Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature . Rev. ed. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.

Revision of essential 1966 work, offering a comprehensive formal theory of realism and naturalism, linked by adherence to an ethical idealism that informs, restructures, and complicates the diversity of themes and topics, the often bleak subject matter, and the presence of a deterministic worldview. Collects a variety of essays that construct a coherent portrait of the movements and their defining tensions.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Nineteenth-century french realism.

Young Communards in Prison (Les Fédérés à la Conciergerie)

Gustave Courbet

The Past, the Present, and the Future (Le passé – Le présent – L'Avenir), published in La Caricature, no. 166, Jan. 9, 1834

Honoré Daumier

Le ventre législatif: Aspect des bancs ministériels de la chambre improstituée de 1834

Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril, 1834, Plate 24 of l'Association mensuelle

Retreat from the Storm

Jean-François Millet

The Horse Fair

Rosa Bonheur

Young Ladies of the Village

Sheepshearing Beneath a Tree

Woman with a Rake

The Third-Class Carriage

The Witnesses - The War Council

First Steps, after Millet

Vincent van Gogh

Ross Finocchio Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

The Realist movement in French art flourished from about 1840 until the late nineteenth century, and sought to convey a truthful and objective vision of contemporary life. Realism emerged in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1848 that overturned the monarchy of Louis-Philippe and developed during the period of the Second Empire under Napoleon III. As French society fought for democratic reform, the Realists democratized art by depicting modern subjects drawn from the everyday lives of the working class. Rejecting the idealized classicism of academic art and the exotic themes of Romanticism , Realism was based on direct observation of the modern world. In keeping with Gustave Courbet’s  statement in 1861 that “painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist in the representation of real and existing things,” Realists recorded in often gritty detail the present-day existence of humble people, paralleling related trends in the naturalist literature of Émile Zola, Honoré de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert. The elevation of the working class into the realms of high art and literature coincided with Pierre Proudhon’s socialist philosophies and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto , published in 1848, which urged a proletarian uprising.

Courbet (1819–1877) established himself as the leading proponent of Realism by challenging the primacy of history painting, long favored at the official Salons and the École des Beaux-Arts, the state-sponsored art academy. The groundbreaking works that Courbet exhibited at the Paris Salons of 1849 and 1850–51—notably A Burial at Ornans (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and The Stonebreakers (destroyed)—portrayed ordinary people from the artist’s native region on the monumental scale formerly reserved for the elevating themes of history painting. At the time, Courbet’s choice of contemporary subject matter and his flouting of artistic convention was interpreted by some as an anti-authoritarian political threat. Proudhon, in fact, read The Stonebreakers as an “irony directed against our industrialized civilization … which is incapable of freeing man from the heaviest, most difficult, most unpleasant tasks, the eternal lot of the poor.” To achieve an honest and straightforward depiction of rural life, Courbet eschewed the idealized academic technique and employed a deliberately simple style, rooted in popular imagery, which seemed crude to many critics of the day. His Young Ladies of the Village ( 40.175 ), exhibited at the Salon of 1852, violates conventional rules of scale and perspective and challenges traditional class distinctions by underlining the close connections between the young women (the artist’s sisters), who represent the emerging rural middle class, and the poor cowherd who accepts their charity.

When two of Courbet’s major works ( A Burial at Ornans and The Painter’s Studio ) were rejected by the jury of the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris, he withdrew his eleven accepted submissions and displayed his paintings privately in his Pavillon du Réalisme, not far from the official international exhibition. For the introduction to the catalogue of this independent, one-man show, Courbet wrote a Realist manifesto, echoing the tone of the period’s political manifestos, in which he asserts his goal as an artist “to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own estimation.” In his autobiographical Painter’s Studio (Musée d’Orsay), Courbet is surrounded by groups of his friends, patrons, and even his models, documenting his artistic and political experiences since the Revolution of 1848.

During the same period, Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) executed scenes of rural life that monumentalize peasants at work, such as Sheep Shearing Beneath a Tree ( 40.12.3 ). While a large portion of the French population was migrating from rural areas to the industrialized cities, Millet left Paris in 1849 and settled in Barbizon , where he lived the rest of his life, close to the rustic subjects he painted throughout his career. The Gleaners (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), exhibited at the Salon of 1857, created a scandal because of its honest depiction of rural poverty. The bent postures of Millet’s gleaners, as well as his heavy application of paint, emphasize the physical hardship of their task. Like Courbet’s portrayal of stonebreakers, Millet’s choice of subject was considered politically subversive, even though his style was more conservative than that of Courbet, reflecting his academic training. Millet endows his subjects with a sculptural presence that recalls the art of Michelangelo and Nicolas Poussin , as seen in his Woman with a Rake ( 38.75 ). His tendency to generalize his figures gives many of his works a sentimental quality that distinguishes them from Courbet’s unidealized paintings. Vincent van Gogh greatly admired Millet and made copies of his compositions, including First Steps, after Millet ( 64.165.2 ).

The socially conscious art of Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) offers an urban counterpart to that of Millet. Daumier highlighted socioeconomic distinctions in the newly modernized urban environment in a group of paintings executed around 1864 that illustrate the experience of modern rail travel in first-, second-, and third-class train compartments. In The First-Class Carriage (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore), there is almost no physical or psychological contact among the four well-dressed figures, whereas The Third-Class Carriage ( 29.100.129 ) is tightly packed with an anonymous crowd of working-class men and women. In the foreground, Daumier isolates three generations of an apparently fatherless family, conveying the hardship of their daily existence through the weary poses of the young mother and sleeping boy. Though clearly of humble means, their postures, clothing, and facial features are rendered in as much detail as those of the first-class travelers.

Best known as a lithographer , Daumier produced thousands of graphic works for journals such as La Caricature and Le Charivari , satirizing government officials and the manners of the bourgeoisie. As early as 1832, Daumier was imprisoned for an image of Louis-Philippe as Rabelais’ Gargantua, seated on a commode and expelling public honors to his supporters. Daumier parodied the king again in 1834 with his caricature The Past, the Present, and the Future ( 41.16.1 ), in which the increasingly sour expressions on the three faces of Louis-Philippe suggest the failures of his regime. In the same year, Daumier published Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1834 , in the journal Association Mensuelle ( 20.23 ). Though Daumier did not witness the event portrayed—the violent suppression of a workers’ demonstration—the work is unsparing in its grim depiction of death and government brutality; Louis-Philippe ordered the destruction of all circulating prints immediately after its publication.

As a result of Courbet’s political activism during the Paris Commune of 1871, he too was jailed. Incarcerated at Versailles before serving a six-month prison sentence for participation in the destruction of the Vendôme Column, Courbet documented his observations of the conditions under which children were held in his drawing Young Communards in Prison ( 1999.251 ), published in the magazine L’Autograph , one of a small number of works inspired by his experiences following the fall of the Commune.

Like Millet, Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899) favored rural imagery and developed an idealizing style derived from the art of the past. Similar in scale to Courbet’s works of the same period, Bonheur’s imposing Horse Fair ( 87.25 ), shown at the Salon of 1853, is the product of extensive preparatory drawings and the artist’s scientific study of animal anatomy; her style also reflects the influence of such Romantic painters as Delacroix and Gericault and the classical equine sculpture from the Parthenon. Édouard Manet and the Impressionists were the immediate heirs to the Realist legacy, as they too embraced the imagery of modern life. By the 1870s and 1880s, however, their art no longer carried the political charge of Realism.

Finocchio, Ross. “Nineteenth-Century French Realism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rlsm/hd_rlsm.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Nochlin, Linda. Realism . Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.

Nochlin, Linda. Realism and Tradition in Art, 1848–1900: Sources and Documents . Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966.

Tinterow, Gary. Introduction to Modern Europe / The Metropolitan Museum of Art . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987. See on MetPublications

Additional Essays by Ross Finocchio

• Finocchio, Ross. “ Fra Angelico (ca. 1395–1455) .” (October 2006)
• Finocchio, Ross. “ Mannerism: Bronzino (1503–1572) and his Contemporaries .” (October 2003)

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Article contents

Realism and security.

• Stephen M. Walt Stephen M. Walt John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.286
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 22 December 2017

Political Realism has been described as the “oldest theory” of international politics, as well as the “dominant” one. Central to the realist tradition is the concept of “security.” Realism sees the insecurity of states as the main problem in international relations. It depicts the international system as a realm where “self-help” is the primary motivation; states must provide security for themselves because no other agency or actor can be counted on to do so. However, realists offer different explanations for why security is scarce, emphasizing a range of underlying mechanisms and causal factors such as man’s innate desire for power; conflicts of interest that arise between states possessing different resource endowments, economic systems, and political orders; and the “ordering principle” of international anarchy. They also propose numerous factors that can intensify or ameliorate the basic security problem, such as polarity, shifts in the overall balance of power, the “offense–defense balance,” and domestic politics. Several alternative approaches to international relations have challenged the basic realist account of the security problem, three of which are democratic peace theory, economic liberalism, and social constructivism. Furthermore, realism outlines various strategies that states can pursue in order to make themselves more secure, such as maximizing power, international alliances, arms racing, socialization and innovation, and institutions and diplomacy. Scholars continue to debate the historical roots, conceptual foundations, and predictive accuracy of realism. New avenues of research cover issues such as civil war, ethnic conflict, mass violence, September 11, and the Iraq War.

• Political Realism
• international relations
• balance of power
• offense–defense balance
• democratic peace theory
• international alliances

Introduction

Political Realism is a philosophical approach to the study of politics – and especially international politics – that is widely regarded as the most enduring and influential tradition in the field. As Robert Keohane put it in 1983 , “for over 2000 years, what Hans J. Morgenthau dubbed ‘Political Realism’ has constituted the principal traditions for the analysis of international relations in Europe and its offshoots in the New World” (Keohane 1983 ; also Walt 2003 ). Michael Doyle ( 1997 ) agrees, describing realism as the “oldest theory” of international politics but also the “dominant” one.

There are many different realist theories within that broad tradition, but each of them sees states as the central actors in world affairs and emphasizes that they coexist in an anarchic social order where there is no central authority to protect them from one another. As a result, realist theories see the insecurity of states (or in some cases, substate groups) as the central problem in international relations. In short, realism depicts the international system as a realm where “self-help” is the primary motivation; states must provide security for themselves because no other agency or actor can be counted on to do so.

In general, realist theories define “security” as the security of the state and place particular emphasis on the preservation of the state’s territorial integrity and the physical safety of its inhabitants (Walt 1991 ). A state is thought to be secure if it can defend against or deter a hostile attack and prevent other states from compelling it to adjust its behavior in significant ways or to sacrifice core political values. This conception may be contrasted with alternative definitions of “security” that focus on either the individual or the global level and do not privilege the state, or those that include nonviolent threats to human life (such as disease or environmental degradation), domestic crime, economic hardship, or threats to cultural autonomy or identity (Buzan 1983 ; Booth 2007 ).

Thus, a fairly narrow concept of “security” is central to the realist tradition. Indeed, one might argue that this narrow conception of “security” (i.e., protection against violent attack or coercion) has been inextricably linked to realist thought since its inception. In his famous history of the Peloponnesian War, for example, Thucydides traced its origins to the fear induced in Sparta by the growth of Athenian power ( 1996 :16). For Niccolo Machiavelli , writing in the Italian Renaissance, the Prince’s key object must be to preserve his position and the security of his realm in a world filled with wicked men who may threaten his position. As a result, rulers must be feared rather than loved and must be ready to act ruthlessly or treacherously if that is what “reason of state” demands (Haslam 2002 :28–33). Working in the shadow of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes famously concluded that the natural condition of man was the “warre of every man against every man,” although this bleak condition might be remedied for individuals by a strong government – the Leviathan – that could establish among human society a “common power to feare” (Hobbes 1651/1968 :187–8). Among states, however, there was still no overarching authority that could protect them from each other and prevent conflict and war. In his Discourse on Inequality ( 1754 ), Jean-Jacques Rousseau agreed that the absence of a central authority inhibited efforts to cooperate and so made the state necessary, in partial contrast to the Kantian view that “well-ordered republics” might overcome the incentives for rivalry inherent in anarchy and establish a “pacific union” (Doyle 1983 ).

Modern versions of realism proceed from a similar foundation. The central idea common to all modern versions of realism is that “the presence of multiple states in anarchy renders the security of each of them problematic and encourages them to compete with each other for power and/or security” (Walt 2003 ). For most realists, the imperative of obtaining security exerts far-reaching effects on states, encouraging them to act in certain predictable ways and eliminating those states who fail to compete effectively. If security were not a problem – either because humans or states ceased to care about it or because it was reliably guaranteed – realist theory would lose much of its analytic power and potential relevance.

Even scholars who do not advertise themselves as “realists” embrace key elements of this picture of the world. For example, the extensive literature on power transitions (Organski and Kugler 1980 ) implicitly assumes that states react to shifts in the balance of power largely from security concerns, and the so-called bargaining approach to international conflict models decisions for war as actions undertaken by states who are free to use force to secure their aims and are aware that their opponents are able to do the same (Fearon 1995 ; Powell 2002 ).

This essay explores the relationship between realism and security by considering three main topics. First, how does realism explain security and insecurity in world politics? In other words, why is security a problem, and what factors or conditions make this problem more or less intense? Second, what does realism tell us about the different ways that states can address this problem? In the “self-help” world that realism depicts, what are the different strategies that states can employ in order to try to make themselves more secure? Third, what security topics is realist theory currently addressing and what theoretical puzzles continue to attract attention?

Why is Security a Problem in World Politics?

As noted above, a central theme in virtually all realist writing is the idea that the existence of more than one state or “conflict group” (Gilpin 1986 ) in a condition of anarchy renders the security of each problematic and encourages them to compete with each other. Yet different realists offer different explanations for why security is scarce and focus our attention on different underlying mechanisms and causal factors. As recent works on the intellectual underpinnings of realism suggest, these different emphases reflect the historical conditions at the time different works were composed, the intellectual backgrounds and life experiences of particular authors, and the state of the broader intellectual discourse that accompanied these works (Schmidt 1998 ; Donnelly 2000 ; Haslam 2002 ).

What is the Root Cause of the Security Problem?

For “biological realists” such as Machiavelli, Reinhold Niebuhr ( 1932 ), and especially Hans J. Morgenthau ( 1946 ; 1948 ), the ultimate taproot of insecurity is human nature, and in particular man’s innate desire for power. As Niebuhr put it, “the will to power of competing national groups is the cause of the international anarchy which the moral sense of mankind has thus far vainly striven to overcome.” Or more simply: “the ultimate sources of social conflicts and injustices are to be found in the ignorance and selfishness of men” ( 1932 :19, 23). For these writers, international anarchy is a permissive condition that allowed human aggressiveness – what Morgenthau termed the animus dominandi , or desire to dominate – to express itself. States were insecure because men craved power and sought to get more of it, and there was no central authority to prevent them from attempting to do so. Human nature is a constant and cannot be amended, which means that conflict is a central part of political life and cannot be eliminated. Indeed, given the primitive passions that he believed drove political behavior, Morgenthau himself remained ambivalent about whether a “rational” science of politics was even possible or desirable (Guilhot 2008 ).

By contrast, the English scholar E.H. Carr traced the security problem to the inevitable conflicts of interest that arise between states possessing different resource endowments, economic systems, and political orders. Carr’s chief work in the realist vein, The Twenty Years’ Crisis ( 1946 ), was a trenchant critique of the idealistic belief that international law, global opinion, or institutions like the League of Nations could effectively eliminate conflict and insecurity between states. In Carr’s words, “it is profitless to imagine a hypothetical world in which men no longer organize themselves in groups for purposes of conflict ( 1946 :231). For Carr as for other “classical” realists, the absence of an effective central authority allowed power politics to continue and rendered all states potentially vulnerable to the predations of others, and especially revisionist powers. But Carr sees the motivating force behind security competition not in some innate human drive for power but in the governing systems, ruling ideologies, or personalities of individual leaders. Carr’s broader historical and sociological approach to world politics is now most closely reflected in the so-called English School (Bull 1977 ; Watson 1992 ; Linklater and Suganami 2006 ), which both draws on the realist tradition and challenges some of its gloomier predictions.

By contrast, “structural” realists emphasize a different “root cause” of the security problem, placing greater causal weight on the “ordering principle” of international anarchy. In this view, the absence of a central authority encourages states to compete even when they might not want to do so, a tendency observed by several writers well before the development of the modern “neorealist” version of this argument (Dickinson 1916 ; Schwarzenberg 1941 ). Thus, Herz ( 1950 ) noted that in the absence of central authority states face a “security dilemma” whereby actions undertaken by one state to increase its own security (such as building armaments or forming an alliance) tend to leave other state(s) less secure and prompt a counterreaction, which in turn leads to heightened suspicions and thus leaves both parties less secure than before. Moreover, Herz believed that the existing international order was even less stable than the idea of a security dilemma suggested, given the fragility of legal and social institutions and the ever-present possibility of evil (Stirk 2005 ).

This conception of structure as an active causal force was laid out with particular clarity in Kenneth Waltz’s landmark Theory of International Politics ( 1979 ). Where Morgenthau and some other early realists were ambivalent about the possibility of a “science of politics” (due to what they saw as the inherently unpredictable nature of human passions), Waltz sought to put realist theory on a more rigorous scientific basis. To do so, he drew on contemporary philosophy of science, microeconomics, and systems theory, with the aim of developing a purely “systemic” theory.

Waltz began by assuming only that all states sought to survive, while acknowledging the possibility that some states might also have more ambitious goals. Because these states were placed in an anarchic realm, however, they had to rely on their own resources and strategies in order to survive. For Waltz, the international system was not merely a passive arena in which men strove for power or states pursued independently derived “national interests.” Rather, he saw international structure – in which anarchy is a key ordering principle – as an active force that “shaped and shoved” the states whose existence constituted the system and who were in turn induced to behave in certain ways or suffer the consequences (Waltz 1979 ; 1986 :343–4; Buzan et al. 1993 ).

Here it is worth emphasizing that Waltz relied primarily on the causal mechanism of competitive selection to explain why states tended to act in similar ways (i.e., to compete). Just as poorly managed firms in a competitive marketplace were likely to go bankrupt, states that did not heed the imperatives of the system were more likely to be conquered or to drop from the ranks of great powers. Yet Waltz also maintained that the “death rate” among states was quite low, which implied there was ample latitude for suboptimal behavior. Fazal ( 2007 ) amends this basic picture, suggesting that the likelihood of “state death” varies considerably across space and time. She finds that “buffer states” lying between great powers experience especially high death rates historically, that “state death” declined dramatically after 1945 , and that there is only a weak relationship between a state’s relative power and its prospects for survival.

Moreover, despite his emphasis on the autonomous role of system-level forces, Waltz’s “neorealist” theory still relied on unit-level factors to account for the security problem. As Schweller ( 1996 ) emphasized, if one accepts Waltz’s assumptions that the system is anarchic and states merely seek to survive, then there is in fact no logical necessity for them to worry about each other and no inherent reason for conflict to arise. And, as Mearsheimer ( 2009 ) has recently shown, Waltz did not in fact assume that states were rational but emphasized that great powers often behave in aggressive and reckless ways for various domestic political reasons. In order to explain why conflicts arise and states are insecure, in short, Waltz ended up saying one needed a separate theory of “foreign policy,” which is merely another way of saying that one must add unit-level factors to fully explain why states in anarchy are insecure.

The impact of systemic pressures becomes even clearer in Mearsheimer’s ( 2001 ) own elaboration of “offensive realism.” He explicitly assumes that states are rational actors that seek to survive, possess some capacity to hurt each other, and cannot know each other’s intentions with 100 percent confidence. Even if all states were convinced that no other state harbored any dangerous intentions at a given moment, they could not be sure that some other state might not become hostile or aggressive in the future. Similarly, even if a state is strong enough to defend itself now, it must continue to compete lest some other state catch up and then seek to use its power to extract concessions (or worse). Thus, Mearsheimer concludes that states wishing to survive must constantly look for opportunities to increase their power, so that they are in the best position to thwart an attack should one arise at some point in the future. Because all great powers also know that potential rivals are facing the same incentives, they are forced to compete for power even if they do not wish to, for fear of falling behind and becoming vulnerable to others.

Thus, offensive realism traces the security problem directly to the anarchic condition of world politics and the “unknowability” of intentions, though Lobell ( 2002–3 ) argues that domestic politics still plays a key role in shaping each state’s specific security strategy. It sees security competition and power-maximization as “hard-wired” into any system of world politics where central authority is lacking, intentions cannot be foreseen, and states have some significant capacity to harm one another.

What Makes the Security Problem More or Less Intense?

Given the central place that security has in realist thought, it is not surprising that scholars working in this tradition have devoted considerable attention to identifying factors that can intensify or ameliorate the basic security problem.

Classical realists maintained that the danger of war was lowest and the security of states greatest in a multipolar system containing several (i.e., more than three) major powers. They argued that this permitted flexibility of alignment, precluding the development of bitter and enduring enmities and facilitating the formation of balancing coalitions which would help deter especially strong or aggressive states and thus make war more likely. Even if multipolar systems did not prevent war, they would enhance the security of the great powers and make it less likely that any of them would be eliminated from the system (Morgenthau 1948 ; Kaplan 1957 ; Deutsch and Singer 1964 ).

By contrast, Waltz ( 1964 ; 1979 ) argued that multipolarity created a greater risk of miscalculation and compounded the collective action problem, leading to inefficient balancing and thus to greater opportunities for aggression. He maintained that bipolarity was the most stable structure, because the two leading powers already controlled most of the assets in the system, were less prone to miscalculate the likelihood of opposition, and had a greater capacity to keep client states under control. Mearsheimer ( 2001 ) extends this line of argument, agreeing that bipolarity is the most stable configuration of power, while arguing that balanced multipolarity makes states more prone to war and that “unbalanced multipolarity” is the least stable structure of all. In particular, Mearsheimer claims that unbalanced multipolarity tempts the strongest powers into making bids for regional hegemony and is thus most likely to trigger hegemonic wars. A further refinement is Schweller ( 1998 ), whose analysis of alliance dynamics in World War II suggests that unbalanced tripolar systems are a particularly dangerous special case. Copeland ( 1996a ) offers a dissenting analysis, suggesting that bipolar systems where one pole is declining will be prone to crises and war because the declining state has no alignment prospects that can reverse unfavorable power trends.

Power Transitions

A second strand of theorizing identifies shifts in the overall balance of power as a key source of security competition and war, although there is as yet no consensus regarding the key causal mechanisms linking shifts in power to insecurity and war (Organski and Kugler 1980 ; Gilpin 1981 ; Levy 1987 ). Shifts in the balance of power are seen as dangerous because: (1) rising states become more ambitious and initiate conflicts in order to revise the existing status quo; (2) declining states fear the rising power and wage preventive wars to arrest its ascent; or (3) large shifts in the balance of power make it harder for potential rivals to gauge the balance of power and increase the risk of miscalculation. Copeland ( 2000 ) argues these problems are more severe in bipolarity than in multipolarity, because a declining state in bipolarity needs only to defeat a single rising power, but a declining state in multipolarity must believe it is strong enough to take on both the rising power and its potential great power allies.

The “Offense–Defense Balance”

Where Waltz and other “structural” realists focus on polarity (defined by the distribution of overall power resources), another influential strand of realist theory explains the intensity of security competition by focusing on the “fine-grained structure of power” (Van Evera 1999 ) and the effects of geography, diplomacy, and technology.

This approach – which is a key element in what is sometimes termed “defensive realism” – relies on the core concept of the offense–defense balance . This balance is generally defined as the relative ease or difficulty of conquest (Quester 1977 ; Jervis 1978 ; Glaser and Kaufmann 1998 ; Van Evera 1999 ). In the same way as other realist theories, defensive realism recognizes that anarchy forces all states to worry about security, but the intensity of this concern (i.e., the level of insecurity) will depend on whether conquest is easy or hard. When military technology, geography, the character of diplomacy, etc., combine to make conquest difficult, then security is plentiful and the danger of war declines. When these various factors combine to favor conquest, however, states will be less secure, cooperation will be elusive and wars will be more frequent and intense. It follows that states can enhance their security by adopting defensive military postures (especially when defense has the advantage) and status quo states can signal their benign intentions by eschewing offensive capabilities (Glaser 1994–5 ; Kydd 1997 ). Thus, defensive realists implicitly challenge the belief that security is scarce because states cannot gauge the intentions of others and must therefore assume the worst.

Although “offense–defense” theory was logically coherent and intuitively plausible, other prominent realists questioned its core claims. Critics argue that the core concept of the theory (the “offense–defense balance”) is impossible to measure and can change unpredictably, which means that states cannot and do not base important national security policy decisions on this factor (Levy 1984 ). Lieber ( 2005 ) has also challenged the empirical basis for the theory, arguing that national leaders rarely agree on what the “offense–defense balance” is – even after major technological revolutions – and do not seem to rely on assessments of the balance when making decisions for war and peace.

Domestic Politics

While emphasizing the incentives for competition induced by anarchy, some realists have focused on how different domestic orders, social structures, or individual leaders may respond to these pressures in radically different ways. Snyder ( 1992 ) and Van Evera ( 1984 ) argue that “cartelized” or “militarized” polities are prone to exaggerate security threats and adopt overly aggressive responses to them; more recently, “neoclassical” realists (Lobell et al. 2009 ) have sought to incorporate a variety of domestic or individual variables to explain specific foreign policy decisions, thereby sacrificing parsimony for the sake of descriptive accuracy.

Can the Problem of Security Be Solved?

Over the past two centuries, several alternative approaches to international relations have challenged the basic realist account of the security problem, and especially its conclusion that competition and insecurity are an inevitable condition for sovereign states coexisting in anarchy. In particular, these alternatives accept the idea that anarchy may encourage competition between states, but conclude that the picture of relentless security competition portrayed by realism is at best incomplete and at worst dangerously self-fulfilling.

Democratic Peace Theory

First theorized by Immanuel Kant in his essay Perpetual Peace ( 1795 ), democratic peace theory acknowledges the potential for security competition in an anarchic order comprised of independent states, but argues that liberal or democratic states can nonetheless establish enduring relations where security competition is significantly attenuated (Doyle 1986 ; Russett 1994 ). The primary basis for this claim is the observation that democratic states do not seem to have fought each other, a claim that has been hotly contested (and defended) on a number of grounds (Elman 1997 ; Green et al. 2001 ).

Even if the empirical challenge were resolved, there is as yet no agreement on the precise causal mechanism that might account for the absence of war between liberal states. Scholars have suggested that democracies do not fight each other because: (1) democratic leaders fear electoral punishment; (2) there are powerful “norms of respect” between states sharing liberal values; or (3) because democratic states can make more credible commitments and signal intentions more credibly, thereby lowering the risk of war via miscalculation (Schultz 1999 ). Rosato ( 2003 ) challenges these explanations on theoretical grounds, while Mansfield and Snyder ( 2005 ) offer the important qualification that, while democratic states may be less inclined to fight one another, democratizing states are in fact more likely to be involved in war.

Economic Liberalism

Liberal theories of economic interdependence have long posed a second challenge to realism’s depiction of the security problem (Angell 1913 ). As with democratic peace theory, economic liberalism accepts the primacy of national states and the absence of world government, but suggests that high levels of trade or investment can make it too costly for states to fight each other. In this view, rational self-interest (i.e., the desire for greater material prosperity) thus provides a powerful disincentive to war. High levels of economic trade or investment are also believed to encourage transnational ties and create bonds of familiarity between states, thereby reducing suspicions and minimizing xenophobic stereotyping. Critics point out that high levels of interdependence did not prevent World War I and also encouraged Japanese expansion in World War II, but the theory has been resurrected in more modern forms (Rosecrance 1986 ) and continues to attract scholarly attention. Copeland ( 1996b ) links economic liberalism and offense–defense theory and suggests that interdependence reinforces peace when conquest is hard; while Brooks ( 2005 ) suggests that the integrated nature of global production processes has greatly increased the disincentives for conflict for industrial powers. Mansfield and Pollins ( 2003 ) summarize the state of the debate and find that the relationship between economic interdependence and war remains highly conditional.

Social Constructivism

Over the past two decades, social constructivists have mounted a more fundamental challenge to the realist explanation of the origins of international insecurity. Broadly speaking, constructivists argue that there is no necessary connection between anarchy and insecurity; in Alexander Wendt ’s famous phrase, “anarchy is what states make of it” (Wendt 1992 ; 1999 ). In this view, it is realist discourse that convinces leaders and populations to pursue competitive policies, and different results would occur if individuals spoke, wrote, and thought about these issues in a new way (Ashley 1984 ; Booth 2007 ). A contrasting view is offered by Fischer ( 1992 ), who argued that relations among the heterogeneous political units of feudal Europe revealed the same degree of insecurity and competition that realist theory predicts (including the formation of alliances, aggressive wars, etc.) despite the ideology of Christian universalism that infused the period, the fundamentally different nature of political identity, and the absence of a strong norm of sovereignty.

Constructivists also challenge traditional conceptions of “security” itself, suggesting that new conceptions and discursive practices could lead to a significant shift in state practice and yield more stable or peaceful outcomes (Krause and Williams 2003 ). Other constructivists emphasize the role that norms like the “nuclear taboo” or the norm against chemical weapons use can play in limiting or regulating interstate competition, thereby reducing levels of insecurity without eliminating it altogether (Price 1997 ; Tanenwald 2007 ).

In addition to these “regulatory norms,” some constructivists have argued that shifts in discourse and identity can transform existing conflicts and potentially eliminate the root causes of international rivalry, as illustrated by the Gorbachev revolution in Soviet foreign policy and the establishment of a “security community” within and between North America and Western Europe (Koslowski and Kratochwil 1994 ; Adler and Barnett 1998 ). Realists generally disagree with these interpretations, arguing that material decline played a more important role in ending the Cold War and emphasizing the potential for conflict that still remains (e.g., Wohlforth 1994–5 ).

Though not normally described as constructivist works, Mueller’s important discussions of the obsolescence of war ( 1986 ; 2004 ) also suggest that shifts in discourse and collective attitudes toward war have played a key role in inhibiting large-scale great power warfare since World War II. Mueller emphasizes that these changed attitudes have not eliminated all wars or rendered security competition obsolete, but he clearly believes the change is significant and likely to endure among the major industrial powers.

Less optimistically, a recent constructivist interpretation argues that states seek not just physical security from attack but also “ontological security” defined as the preservation of an existing identity and a set of recurring relations with others (Mitzen 2006 ). The latter view sees states not as trapped in security dilemmas that they would prefer to escape, but rather as attached to conflictive relationships that help preserve the state’s own identity. Interestingly, by providing a distinct causal mechanism for persistent conflict, this perspective actually reinforces realist views about the inevitability of security competition.

While useful, none of these broad critiques of the realist perspective on insecurity has delivered a fatal blow. This is itself not surprising, insofar as wars continue to occur and security competition still persists, even between democratic states with high levels of economic interdependence.

What Can States Do to Improve Their Security?

In addition to explaining why states worry about security, realism also identifies various strategies that states can pursue in order to make themselves more secure. Thus, realism offers both diagnosis and prescription, although the latter element is based on pragmatic considerations rather than on larger moral or ethical foundations. Although individual realist scholars obviously have their own moral convictions, realist theories themselves are essentially amoral . Realism may offer prescriptions for how states can best survive, but it is largely silent on whether the survival of any particular state or government is morally desirable.

In fact, there has been a lively debate among realists on the question of whether structural theories such as “neorealism” can offer specific guidance for foreign policy or not. Waltz insisted that his structural theory did not, and that to do so required a separate “theory of foreign policy.” Other realists challenged Waltz’s view explicitly (Elman 1996 ; Fearon 1998b ) and it is clear that many prominent realists (including Waltz himself) have in fact used realist theory to derive specific recommendations for policy (e.g., Waltz 1981 ; Mearsheimer 1993 ; Walt 1987 ; 2005 ), a tendency that Oren ( 2009 ) has challenged on logical grounds. If structure is the main determinant of state behavior, he observes, then on what grounds can realists criticize what specific great powers are doing?

Should States Maximize Power?

According to Waltz ( 1979 ), the tendency for states to balance power discourages attempts to maximize power and encourages states to seek only enough power to defend their own territory. Echoing this view, other “defensive realists” argue that the increasing difficulty of conquest and the nuclear revolution reinforce this tendency, and permit status quo states to adopt more cooperative strategies and to eschew efforts to maximize power (Van Evera 1999 ; Glaser 2000 ). In this view, states can maximize security by cooperating with others in mutually beneficial ways (e.g,. arms control agreements), and by adopting defensive military doctrines, which convey a “costly” (and therefore credible) signal of benign intent and permit “security-seeking” states to avoid needless rivalries. Montgomery ( 2006 ) offers an important qualification to this line of argument, pointing out that only when offense and defense are easily differentiated and the balance between them is neutral can states reveal peaceful motives without simultaneously jeopardizing their security.

As noted above, offensive realists (and others) reject this line of argument almost entirely, claiming that conquest is more profitable than defensive realists believe (Liberman 1996 ) and that it is largely impossible to distinguish between “offensive” and “defensive” weaponry. Accordingly, they argue that great powers should seek to maximize their overall power, because this is still the most reliable way to survive in an anarchic system (Mearsheimer 2001 ). Among other things, these critics point out that the nuclear revolution did not halt intense security competition either during or after the Cold War, and question whether “costly signaling” can ever be sufficiently credible as to convince states to neglect the balance of power (Lieber and Press 2006 ).

The Role of International Alliances

Realist theory has long seen alliances as one of the primary tools of statecraft (Morgenthau 1959 ), and recent realist research has devoted considerable attention to exploring the dynamics of alliance formation and their consequences for security. Building on Waltz’s claim that great power tended to balance against the strongest state or coalition rather than “bandwagon” with them, subsequent research found that states were in fact more likely to balance against threats, which were conceived as an amalgam of power, geographic proximity, specific offensive capabilities, and perceived intentions (Walt 1987 ). Weak states were believed to be somewhat more inclined to bandwagon than the great powers, especially when they were vulnerable and could not locate strong protectors, but bandwagoning was still regarded as rare.

The dominance of external balancing behavior was backed by several subsequent studies (Garnham 1991 ; Priess 1996 ) and challenged by others (Barnett and Levy 1991 ; Labs 1992 ). Defensive realists (e.g., Van Evera 1999 ) argued that rapid and efficient balancing behavior made conquest more difficult and thus discouraged aggressive behavior, while other realists argued that domestic impediments and dilemmas of collective action encouraged free-riding behavior and “under-balancing,” thus creating openings for aggression, especially in evenly balanced multipolar orders (Schweller 2004 ).

Employing a broader definition of bandwagoning that included opportunistic alignment for purposes of expansion, Schweller ( 1994 ) argued that bandwagoning behavior was more common than earlier realists had suggested. Schroeder ( 1994 ) also questioned the propensity for states to balance and suggested that diplomatic history revealed that states often preferred to do almost anything rather than balance a powerful rival. David ( 1992 ) argued that developing countries in the postwar era were more sensitive to internal threats than external challenges, and that their alignment decisions were based on whether potential partners could help them thwart internal rivals and retain power.

The most ambitious application of realist theory to the dynamics of alliance politics is Snyder ( 1997 ), which develops a more fine-grained explanation of alliance behavior and its broader consequences for international politics by adding a host of other factors to Waltz’s spare distinction between bipolar and multipolar worlds. Snyder’s analysis also showed that alliance ties could be an ambiguous source of security, especially in multipolar systems, because alliance partners had to worry about being either left in the lurch by an ally (abandonment) or dragged into an unwanted war (entrapment). This “alliance security dilemma” resulted from the fact that hedging against one danger made states more vulnerable to the other (Snyder 1984 ). Christensen and Snyder ( 1990 ) offer a further refinement, arguing that multipolar alliances exhibit different pathologies, depending on the state of the offense–defense balance. When offense is easy, alliance ties will be tight and it will be hard to restrain one’s partners (as in 1914 ), but when defense is believed to be dominant, alliance partners will try to pass the buck and therefore fail to balance efficiently.

In response to these various competing arguments, Vasquez ( 1997 ) suggested that realism was a “degenerating research program” that should be discarded. Realists countered by noting that the main evidence for Vasquez’s recommendation was quite sparse, and consisted primarily of his observation that a few realists had disagreed with each other about the propensity of states to balance. They also noted that, if disagreements of this sort were sufficient to call realism into question, this criterion would also call into question most research programs in the social sciences (Walt 1997 ; Vasquez and Elman 2003 ). More usefully, Levy and Thompson ( 2005 :4) surveyed five centuries of European great power diplomacy and found that balancing behavior occurred primarily in response to hegemonic challenges but not to lesser threats. They conclude that “balancing was a probabilistic tendency rather than an ‘iron law’ of behavior.” The various essays in Paul et al. ( 2004 ) find much evidence of contemporary balancing behavior, but an ambitious multidisciplinary survey of different historical systems by Wohlforth et al. ( 2007 ) found that balancing behavior was neither a universal tendency nor a reliable barrier to regional hegemony, and was instead dependent on particular historical circumstances.

Mearsheimer ( 2001 ) also questioned whether balancing behavior was the preferred response to external threats, and suggested that buck-passing (i.e., getting others to bear the costs of countering a threat) was the more common strategy. In this view, forming a balancing alliance was the second-best alternative, and bandwagoning with a powerful challenger was by far the least appealing.

More recently, realist discussions of alliance formation have explored the apparent failure of major powers to balance against the US in the aftermath of the Cold War. Structural realists predicted that balancing would soon take place (e.g., Waltz 1993 ), while other realists suggested that anti-American balancing would be limited and that the more likely response would be some form of “soft balancing” (Walt 2005 ; 2009 ; Paul 2006 ; Pape 2006 ). By contrast, Wohlforth ( 1999 ; 2009 ) and Brooks and Wohlforth ( 2008 ) suggest that absence of overt balancing is itself a structural consequence of unipolarity; by definition, a unipole (in this case the US) is too powerful to be countered by anything less than a coalition of all other major powers, and such an alliance would inevitably face nearly insurmountable dilemmas of collective action. Lieber and Alexander ( 2005 ) reach the same conclusion by a different path, arguing that medium powers are disinclined to balance because they do not fear US ambitions and agree with most (though not all) of US foreign policy.

Arms Racing

In addition to external alignment, states can also address the security problem by internal effort, such as an arms buildup (Waltz 1979 ). As noted above, this is directly connected to the core concept of the security dilemma, which explains why unilateral efforts to improve one’s security are often ineffective or even counterproductive. Glaser ( 1992 ; 2000 ) argues that the net effect of arms racing depends on the nature of the weapons being acquired, the motivations of the respective states, and their ability to perceive the opponent’s actions in an unbiased way.

Although some early realists questioned whether nuclear weapons could be a reliable source of security (Kissinger 1957 ), over time many realists came to see them as an important exception to the logic of the security dilemma. The logic was straightforward: if nuclear weapons are used to deter attack by threatening unacceptable punishment, then it is possible to defend oneself from conquest without simultaneously acquiring the capacity to conquer others. Thus, Jervis ( 1978 ; 1989 ) argued that second-strike nuclear forces eliminated the security dilemma between states, because once each side has clear second-strike capabilities, adding more weapons to either side is strategically meaningless. Waltz ( 1981 ) drew on similar logic to argue that the slow spread of nuclear weapons would dampen international competition, though this view was soon challenged and remains controversial (Sagan and Waltz 1995 ).

Socialization and Innovation

Realism portrays international politics as a competitive realm of action, in which states are worried about the potential danger posed by other states and must therefore look for ways to protect themselves. Drawing analogies from sociology and microeconomics, Waltz ( 1979 ) argues that states are “socialized to the system” by these competitive pressures. Although states are free to act however they wish, those who behave foolishly or who fail to appreciate the need to compete are likely to be eliminated. As a result, the remaining states will tend to resemble each other over time, as outliers are “selected out.” Waltz also argues that states will consciously imitate each other, to prevent a particular state from gaining or exploiting a permanent advantage, a tendency confirmed by several subsequent studies of the spread of military innovation (Posen 1993b ; Resende-Santos 1996 ; Goldman and Andres 1999 ).

Furthermore, as Mearsheimer ( 2001 ) points out, these same competitive pressures also encourage states to innovate . States not only imitate successful innovations made by others (encouraging greater similarities between them), but they will consciously look for new and improved ways to compete, whether in military affairs or in other realms (thereby encouraging greater diversity). This tendency helps explain why balances of power rarely remain fixed over long periods of time, and why states can never be entirely sure that a seemingly favorable security position will not erode in the face of another state’s innovative breakthrough.

Institutions and Diplomacy

Realism sees institutions as “tools of statecraft” that states can use to advance specific security interests. There is therefore no significant difference between realists and neoliberal institutionalists; each group recognizes that institutions can help states cooperate in specific circumstances (i.e., when there are genuine incentives to cooperate as well as incentives to defect. Grieco ( 1990 ) argued that concerns for relative gains made cooperation more difficult than institutionalists originally believed, a point that some leading institutionalists eventually conceded after a protracted scholarly debate (Keohane 1993 :283).

Realists have long maintained that formal or informal institutions are strong enough to eliminate all conflicts of interest between states or to prevent great powers from pursuing those interests (Carr 1946 ; Mearsheimer 1994–5 ). For realists, however, institutions are largely epiphenomenal: they reflect the underlying balance of power and the interests of the most powerful states (Gruber 1999 ) and thus do not provide a powerful solution to the core security problem.

Nonetheless, realism recognizes that effective diplomatic institutions can make important contributions to security. An efficient system of diplomatic communication is a prerequisite for effective balancing behavior, which in theory makes it easy for threatened states to attract allied support and thus makes opportunistic aggression more difficult. Although realists are skeptical of the claim that “concert systems” or other types of “collective security” systems eliminate the competitive impulses inherent in anarchy (Jervis 1989 ; Kagan 1997–8 ; Rendell 2000 ), they nonetheless recognize that such arrangements can facilitate diplomatic coordination, encourage some degree of mutual restraint, and allow states to deal with shared security problems such as international terrorism or climate change (Jervis 1985 ; Van Evera 2008 ).

New Frontiers and Future Directions

Not surprisingly, the end of the Cold War led a number of scholars to anticipate an end to security competition, which they believed would render realist theory obsolete or at least less useful (Kegley 1993 ; Jervis 2002 ). Collard-Wexler ( 2006 ) argues that realism could not account for the pacification of Western Europe under the aegis of the European Union (an event he correctly judged to be “one of the most significant developments in international relations”) but Rosato ( 2006 ) offers a realist account of this process that addressed many of Collard-Wexler’s criticisms. More recently, other scholars have suggested that the emergence of nonstate threats from international terrorism requires a thorough rethinking of the realist approach. To a considerable extent, scholars working in the realist tradition have attempted to rise to this challenge. Although the post–Cold War period has seen a marked decline in inter state violence and a growing concern about terrorism and civil or ethnic wars, realism continues to make important contributions to the analysis of contemporary security problems.

Civil War, Ethnic Conflict, and Mass Violence

As ethnic conflict and civil war began to dominate the post–Cold War security agenda, Posen ( 1993a ) showed that key elements of realist theory – in particular, the absence of a central authority, the vulnerabilities of particular groups, and the implications of rapid shifts in the balance of power – could explain why some multiethnic societies might be especially prone to conflict in the event of a central government collapse. Posen’s insights were echoed by several subsequent studies (Lake and Rothchild 1996 ; Fearon 1998a ; Rose 2000 ), expanded by others (Kaufmann 1996 ; 1998 ), and qualified by several empirical works (Fearon and Laitin 2003 ; Toft 2003 ). This basic approach is also consistent with arguments tracing civil war settlements to credible third party guarantees, which overcome the commitment problems inherent in anarchy (Walter 2002 ).

Recent scholarship on the origins of mass violence highlights the central role that security considerations play in these tragic events. In particular, Valentino ( 2005 ) convincingly shows that mass killings reflect neither ancient hatreds nor purely ideological programs, but rather the strategic logic of leaders determined to preserve their positions by exterminating groups that they believe pose a long-term threat to either their personal positions or the security of the state itself. In addition to demonstrating the “rationality” of such seemingly irrational and horrific acts, Valentino also underscores the vulnerability that stateless peoples face when confronted by malevolent state power.

Great Power Politics after the Cold War

The end of the Cold War triggered a long debate about its likely implications for great power security competition. Mearsheimer ( 1990 ) argued that the lack of a great power rival would encourage US retrenchment and lead renewed security competition in Europe, while Friedberg ( 1993–4 ), Roy ( 1994 ), and Ross ( 2006 ) drew on realist ideas to anticipate renewed great power competition in Asia. Waltz ( 1993 ) and Layne ( 1993 ; 2006 ) predicted that a combination of overcommitment and external balancing would soon undermine US primacy, while other realists (e.g., Walt 1997 ; 2005 ) suggested that efforts to balance the US would be modest and would not threaten US primacy.

Over time, growing recognition of the scope of US dominance encouraged important theoretical discussions of the novel condition of unipolarity. Wohlforth ( 1999 ; 2009 ) and Brooks and Wohlforth ( 2008 ) suggest that unipolarity is even more stable than bipolarity, because the unipole’s superior position will deter both hegemonic challenges and clashes between other major powers. Pape ( 2009 ) and Layne ( 2006 ) question the durability of the “unipolar” moment and suggest that a combination of overcommitment and external balancing will drive the system back to multipolarity and encourage renewed security competition. Lieber and Press ( 2006 ) argued that US nuclear weapons policy reflected a continued quest for nuclear superiority, a policy based on the assumption of continued security competition in anarchy.

September 11, the Iraq War, and Realism’s Return

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , lay outside the main tenets of realist thought and some scholars suggested that the new focus on terrorism required a fundamental rethinking of the realist perspective (Brenner 2006 ). The main threat to state security now seemed to arise not from other states but from nonstate actors such as al-Qaeda, whose political programs reflected not realpolitik but an amalgam of fundamentalist religion and opposition to perceived foreign interference and the supposedly corrupt and decadent regimes that tolerated it.

Over time, however, the relevance of realist ideas for contemporary security problems became clearer. Societies facing terrorist threats did not respond by calling on international organizations like the UN or on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International. Instead, they looked to national governments to devise new strategies for dealing with this new threat. Accordingly, prominent realists called for significant adjustments in US foreign policy, both to address the specific dangers posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates and to eliminate some of the grievances that have given rise to such movements (Walt 2002 ). Drawing on realism’s rationalist roots, Pape ( 2005 ) sought to explain suicide terrorism as a strategic response to perceived foreign occupation, and similarly prescribed reducing the foreign “footprint” in the Arab and Islamic world so as to retard terrorist recruitment. Not surprisingly, realists were in the vanguard of opposition to the neoconservative campaign to spread democracy and “transform” the Middle East at the point of a gun, correctly arguing that this policy would jeopardize foreign support for the “war on terror” and undermine America’s overall global position (Williams 2005a ; Schmidt and Williams 2006 ; Lieven and Hulsman 2006 ).

It is therefore not surprising that the intellectual connection between realism and security remains strong. Or, as one scholar put it, “it is difficult to avoid a sense that in the 21 st century realism is resurgent” (Williams 2005b :2). Even though the overall level of global violence – and especially inter state violence – has declined dramatically since the end of the Cold War (Gleditsch 2008 ), states do not appear to take security for granted. Ironically, the levels of violence may even be lower because states are taking security seriously, but in more intelligent and farsighted ways than they did in the past. If so, the contributions of realist theory may deserve at least some of the credit. Scholars continue to debate its historical roots, conceptual foundations, and predictive accuracy, but realist thought continues to provide a powerful way to think about the security problems that all states face and the strategies they employ in the ceaseless quest to overcome them.

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Links to Digital Materials

Political Realism. At http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_realism , accessed May 2009. A useful Wikipedia entry on the basic tenets of realist thought.

Stephen M. Walt ’s Foreign Policy blog. At http:/walt.foreignpolicy.com , accessed May 2009. Commentary on contemporary world affairs from a realist perspective.

Theory and International Politics: Conversation with Kenneth Waltz . At http:/globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Waltz/waltz-con0.html , accessed May 2009. Harry Kreisler of the University of California, Berkeley, interviews the creator of neorealist theory.

Through the Realist Lens: Conversation with John Mearsheimer . At http:/globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Mearsheimer/mearsheimer-con0.html , accessed May 2009. Harry Kreisler interviews a prominent contemporary realist.

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The question of the nature and plausibility of realism arises with respect to a large number of subject matters, including ethics, aesthetics, causation, modality, science, mathematics, semantics, and the everyday world of macroscopic material objects and their properties. Although it would be possible to accept (or reject) realism across the board, it is more common for philosophers to be selectively realist or non-realist about various topics: thus it would be perfectly possible to be a realist about the everyday world of macroscopic objects and their properties, but a non-realist about aesthetic and moral value. In addition, it is misleading to think that there is a straightforward and clear-cut choice between being a realist and a non-realist about a particular subject matter. It is rather the case that one can be more-or-less realist about a particular subject matter. Also, there are many different forms that realism and non-realism can take.

The question of the nature and plausibility of realism is so controversial that no brief account of it will satisfy all those with a stake in the debates between realists and non-realists. This article offers a broad brush characterisation of realism, and then fills out some of the detail by looking at a few canonical examples of opposition to realism. The discussion of forms of opposition to realism is far from exhaustive and is designed only to illustrate a few paradigm examples of the form such opposition can take.

There are two general aspects to realism, illustrated by looking at realism about the everyday world of macroscopic objects and their properties. First, there is a claim about existence . Tables, rocks, the moon, and so on, all exist, as do the following facts: the table's being square, the rock's being made of granite, and the moon's being spherical and yellow. The second aspect of realism about the everyday world of macroscopic objects and their properties concerns independence . The fact that the moon exists and is spherical is independent of anything anyone happens to say or think about the matter. Likewise, although there is a clear sense in which the table's being square is dependent on us (it was designed and constructed by human beings after all), this is not the type of dependence that the realist wishes to deny. The realist wishes to claim that apart from the mundane sort of empirical dependence of objects and their properties familiar to us from everyday life, there is no further (philosophically interesting) sense in which everyday objects and their properties can be said to be dependent on anyone's linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, or whatever.

In general, where the distinctive objects of a subject-matter are a , b , c , … , and the distinctive properties are F-ness , G-ness , H-ness and so on, realism about that subject matter will typically take the form of a claim like the following:

Generic Realism : a , b , and c and so on exist, and the fact that they exist and have properties such as F-ness , G-ness , and H-ness is (apart from mundane empirical dependencies of the sort sometimes encountered in everyday life) independent of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on.

Non-realism can take many forms, depending on whether or not it is the existence or independence dimension of realism that is questioned or rejected. The forms of non-realism can vary dramatically from subject-matter to subject-matter, but error-theories, non-cognitivism, instrumentalism, nominalism, certain styles of reductionism, and eliminativism typically reject realism by rejecting the existence dimension, while idealism, subjectivism, and anti-realism typically concede the existence dimension but reject the independence dimension. Philosophers who subscribe to quietism deny that there can be such a thing as substantial metaphysical debate between realists and their non-realist opponents (because they either deny that there are substantial questions about existence or deny that there are substantial questions about independence).

1. Preliminaries

2. against the existence dimension (i): error-theory and arithmetic, 3. against the existence dimension (ii): error-theory and morality, 4. reductionism and non-reductionism, 5. against the existence dimension (iii): expressivism about morals, 6. against the independence dimension (i): semantic realism.

• 7. Against the Independence Dimension (II): More Forms of Anti-realism

8. Undermining the Debate: Quietism

9. concluding remarks and apologies, other internet resources, related entries.

Three preliminary comments are needed. Firstly, there has been a great deal of debate in recent philosophy about the relationship between realism, construed as a metaphysical doctrine, and doctrines in the theory of meaning and philosophy of language concerning the nature of truth and its role in accounts of linguistic understanding (see Dummett 1978 and Devitt 1991a for radically different views on the issue). Independent of the issue about the relationship between metaphysics and the theory of meaning, the well-known disquotational properties of the truth-predicate allow claims about objects, properties, and facts to be framed as claims about the truth of sentences. Since:

(1) ‘The moon is spherical’ is true if and only if the moon is spherical,

the claim that the moon exists and is spherical independently of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices and conceptual schemes, can be framed as the claim that the sentences ‘The moon exists’ and ‘The moon is spherical’ are true independently of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes and so on. As Devitt points out (1991b: 46) availing oneself of this way of talking does not entail that one sees the metaphysical issue of realism as ‘really’ a semantic issue about the nature of truth (if it did, any question about any subject matter would turn out to be ‘really’ a semantic issue).

Secondly, although in introducing the notion of realism above mention is made of objects, properties, and facts, no theoretical weight is attached to the notion of a ‘fact’, or the notions of ‘object’ and ‘property’. To say that it is a fact that the moon is spherical is just to say that the object, the moon, instantiates the property of being spherical, which is just to say that the moon is spherical. There are substantial metaphysical issues about the nature of facts, objects, and properties, and the relationships between them (see Mellor and Oliver 1997 and Lowe 2002, part IV), but these are not of concern here.

Thirdly, as stated above, Generic Realism about the mental or the intentional would strictly speaking appear to be ruled out ab initio , since clearly Jones' believing that Cardiff is in Wales is not independent of facts about belief: trivially, it is dependent on the fact that Jones believes that Cardiff is in Wales. However, such trivial dependencies are not what are at issue in debates between realists and non-realists about the mental and the intentional. A non-realist who objected to the independence dimension of realism about the mental would claim that Jones' believing that Cardiff is in Wales depends in some non-trivial sense on facts about beliefs, etc.

There are at least two distinct ways in which a non-realist can reject the existence dimension of realism about a particular subject matter. The first of these rejects the existence dimension by rejecting the claim that the distinctive objects of that subject-matter exist, while the second admits that those objects exist but denies that they instantiate any of the properties distinctive of that subject-matter. Non-realism of the first kind can be illustrated via Hartry Field's error-theoretic account of arithmetic, and non-realism of the second kind via J.L. Mackie's error-theoretic account of morals. This will show how realism about a subject-matter can be questioned on both epistemological and metaphysical grounds.

According to a platonist about arithmetic, the truth of the sentence ‘7 is prime’ entails the existence of an abstract object , the number 7. This object is abstract because it has no spatial or temporal location, and is causally inert. A platonic realist about arithmetic will say that the number 7 exists and instantiates the property of being prime independently of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on. A certain kind of nominalist rejects the existence claim which the platonic realist makes: there are no abstract objects, so sentences such as ‘7 is prime’ are false (hence the name ‘error-theory’). Platonists divide on their account of the epistemology of arithmetic: some claim that our knowledge of arithmetical fact proceeds by way of some quasi-perceptual encounter with the abstract realm (Gödel 1983), while others have attempted to resuscitate a qualified form of Frege's logicist project of grounding knowledge of arithmetical fact in knowledge of logic (Wright 1983, Hale 1987, Hale and Wright 2001).

The main arguments against platonic realism turn on the idea that the platonist position precludes a satisfactory epistemology of arithmetic. For the classic exposition of the doubt that platonism can square its claims to accommodate knowledge of arithmetical truth with its conception of the subject matter of arithmetic as causally inert, see Benacerraf (1973). Benacerraf argued that platonism faces difficulties in squaring its conception of the subject-matter of arithmetic with a general causal constraint on knowledge (roughly, that a subject can be said to know that P only if she stands in some causal relation to the subject matter of P ). In response, platonists have attacked the idea that a plausible causal constraint on ascriptions of knowledge can be formulated (Wright 1983 Ch.2, Hale 1987 Ch.4). In response, Hartry Field, on the side of the anti-platonists, has developed a new variant of Benacerraf's epistemological challenge which does not depend for its force on maintaining a generalised causal constraint on ascriptions of knowledge. Rather, Field's new epistemological challenge to platonism arises from his reasonable observation that ‘we should view with suspicion any claim to know facts about a certain domain if we believe it impossible to explain the reliability of our beliefs about that domain’ (Field 1989: 232–3). Field's challenge to the platonist is to offer an account of what such a platonist should regard as a datum—i.e. that when ‘ p ’ is replaced by a mathematical sentence, the schema (2) holds in most instances:

(2) If mathematicians accept ‘ p ’ then p . (1989: 230)

Field's point is not simply, echoing Benacerraf, that no causal account of reliability will be available to the platonist, and therefore to the platonic realist. Rather, Field conceives what is potentially a far more powerful challenge to platonic realism when he suggests that not only has the platonic realist no recourse to any explanation of reliability that is causal in character, but that she has no recourse to any explanation that is non-causal in character either. He writes:

(T)here seems prima facie to be a difficulty in principle in explaining the regularity. The problem arises in part from the fact that mathematical entities as the [platonic realist] conceives them, do not causally interact with mathematicians, or indeed with anything else. This means we cannot explain the mathematicians beliefs and utterances on the basis of the mathematical facts being causally involved in the production of those beliefs and utterances; or on the basis of the beliefs or utterances causally producing the mathematical facts; or on the basis of some common cause producing both. Perhaps then some sort of non-causal explanation of the correlation is possible? Perhaps; but it is very hard to see what this supposed non-causal explanation could be. Recall that on the usual platonist picture [i.e. platonic realism], mathematical objects are supposed to be mind- and language-independent; they are supposed to bear no spatiotemporal relations to anything, etc. The problem is that the claims that the [platonic realist] makes about mathematical objects appears to rule out any reasonable strategy for explaining the systematic correlation in question. (1989: 230–1)

This suggests the following dilemma for the platonic realist:

• Platonic realism is committed to the existence of acausal objects and to the claim that these objects, and facts about them, are independent of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on (in short to the claim that these objects, and facts about them, are language- and mind-independent).
• Any causal explanation of reliability is incompatible with the acausality of mathematical objects.
• Any non-causal explanation of reliability is incompatible with the language- and mind-independence of mathematical objects.
• Any explanation of reliability must be causal or non-causal.
• There is no explanation of reliability that is compatible with platonic realism.

Whether there is a version of platonic realism with the resources to see off Field's epistemological challenge is very much a live issue (see Hale 1994, Divers and Miller 1999. For replies to Divers and Miller see Sosa 2002, Shapiro 2007 and Piazza 2009).

What does Field propose as an alternative to platonic realism in arithmetic? Field's answer (1980, 1989) is that although mathematical sentences such as ‘7 is prime’ are false, the utility of mathematical theories can be explained otherwise than in terms of their truth. For Field, the utility of mathematical theories resides not in their truth but in their conservativeness , where a mathematical theory S is conservative if and only if for any nominalistically respectable statement A (i.e. a statement whose truth does not imply the existence of abstract objects) and any body of such statements N , A is not a consequence of the conjunction of N and S unless A is a consequence of N alone (Field 1989: 125). In short, mathematics is useful, not because it allows you to derive conclusions that you couldn't have derived from nominalistically respectable premises alone, but rather because it makes the derivation of those (nominalistically respectable) conclusions easier than it might otherwise have been. Whether or not Field's particular brand of error-theory about arithmetic is plausible is a topic of some debate, which unfortunately cannot be pursued further here (see Hale and Wright 2001).

According to Field's error-theory of arithmetic, the objects distinctive of arithmetic do not exist, and it is this which leads to the rejection of the existence dimension of arithmetical realism, at least as platonistically conceived (for a non-platonistic view of arithmetic which is at least potentially realist, see Benacerraf 1965; for incisive discussion, see Wright 1983, Ch.3). J. L. Mackie, on the other hand, proposes an error-theoretic account of morals, not because there are no objects or entities that could form the subject matter of ethics (it is no part of Mackie's brief to deny the existence of persons and their actions and so on), but because it is implausible to suppose that the sorts of properties that moral properties would have to be are ever instantiated in the world (Mackie 1977, Ch.1). Like Field on arithmetic, then, Mackie's central claim about the atomic, declarative sentences of ethics (such as ‘Napoleon was evil’) is that they are systematically and uniformly false. How might one argue for such a radical-sounding thesis? The clearest way to view Mackie's argument for the error-theory is as a conjunction of a conceptual claim with an ontological claim (following Smith 1994, pp.63–66). The conceptual claim is that our concept of a moral fact is a concept of an objectively prescriptive fact, or, equivalently, that our concept of a moral property is a concept of an objectively prescriptive quality (what Mackie means by this is explained below). The ontological claim is simply that there are no objectively prescriptive facts, that objectively prescriptive properties are nowhere instantiated. The conclusion is that there is nothing in the world answering to our moral concepts, no facts or properties which render the judgements formed via those moral concepts true. Our moral judgements are all of them false. We can thus construe the error-theory as follows:

Conceptual Claim: our concept of a moral fact is a concept of an objectively prescriptive fact, so that the truth of an atomic, declarative moral sentence would require the existence of objectively and categorically prescriptive facts. Ontological Claim: there are no objectively and categorically prescriptive facts. So, Conclusion: there are no moral facts; atomic, declarative moral sentences are systematically and uniformly false.

This argument is clearly valid, so the question facing those who wish to defend at least the existence dimension of realism in the case of morals is whether the premises are true. (Note that strictly speaking the conclusion of the argument is that there are no moral facts as-we-conceive-of-them. Thus, it may be possible to block the argument by advocating a revisionary approach to our moral concepts).

Mackie's conceptual claim is that our concept of a moral requirement is the concept of an objectively, categorically prescriptive requirement. What does this mean? To say that moral requirements are prescriptive is to say that they tell us how we ought to act, to say that they give us reasons for acting. Thus, to say that something is morally good is to say that we ought to pursue it, that we have reason to pursue it. To say that something is morally bad is to say that we ought not to pursue it, that we have reason not to pursue it. To say that moral requirements are categorically prescriptive is to say that these reasons are categorical in the sense of Kant's categorical imperatives. The reasons for action that moral requirements furnish are not contingent upon the possession of any desires or wants on the part of the agent to whom they are addressed: I cannot release myself from the requirement imposed by the claim that torturing the innocent is wrong by citing some desire or inclination that I have. This contrasts, for example, with the requirement imposed by the claim that perpetual lateness at work is likely to result in one losing one's job: I can release myself from the requirement imposed by this claim by citing my desire to lose my job (perhaps because I find it unfulfilling, or whatever). Reasons for action which are contingent in this way on desires and inclinations are furnished by what Kant called hypothetical imperatives.

So our concept of a moral requirement is a concept of a categorically prescriptive requirement. But Mackie claims further that our concept of a moral requirement is a concept of an objectively categorically prescriptive requirement. What does it mean to say that a requirement is objective? Mackie says a lot of different-sounding things about this, and the following is by no means a comprehensive list (references are to Ch. 1 of Mackie 1977). To call a requirement objective is to say that it can be an object of knowledge (24, 31, 33), that it can be true or false (26, 33), that it can be perceived (31, 33), that it can be recognised (42), that it is prior to and independent of our preferences and choices (30, 43), that it is a source of authority external to our preferences and choices (32, 34, 43), that it is part of the fabric of the world (12), that it backs up and validates some of our preferences and choices (22), that it is capable of being simply true (30) or valid as a matter of general logic (30), that it is not constituted by our choosing or deciding to think in a certain way (30), that it is extra-mental (23), that it is something of which we can be aware (38), that it is something that can be introspected (39), that it is something that can figure as a premise in an explanatory hypothesis or inference (39), and so on. Mackie plainly does not take these to be individually necessary: facts about subatomic particles, for example, may qualify as objective in virtue of figuring in explanatory hypotheses even though they cannot be objects of perceptual acquaintance. But his intention is plain enough: these are the sorts of conditions whose satisfaction by a fact renders it objective as opposed to subjective. Mackie's conceptual claim about morality is thus that our concept of a moral requirement is a concept of a fact which is objective in at least some of the senses just listed, while his ontological claim will be that the world does not contain any facts which are both candidates for being moral facts and yet which play even some of the roles distinctive of objective facts.

How plausible is Mackie's conceptual claim? This issue cannot be discussed in detail here, except to note that while it seems plausible to claim that if our concept of a moral fact is a concept of a reason for action then that concept must be a concept of a categorical reason for action, it is not so clear why we have to say that our concept of a moral fact is a concept of a reason for action at all. If we deny this, we can concede the conditional claim whilst resisting Mackie's conceptual claim. One way to do this would be to question the assumption, implicit in the exposition of Mackie's argument for the conceptual claim above, that an ‘ought’-statement that binds an agent A provides that agent with a reason for action. For an example of a version of moral realism that attempts to block Mackie's conceptual claim in this way, see Railton (1986). For defence of Mackie's conceptual claim, see Smith (1994), Ch.3. For exposition and critical discussion, see Miller (2013a), Ch.9.

What is Mackie's argument for his ontological claim? This is set out in his ‘argument from queerness’ (Mackie has another argument, the ‘argument from relativity’ (or ‘argument from disagreement’) (1977: 36–38), but this argument cannot be discussed here for reasons of space. For a useful discussion, see Brink (1984)).The argument from queerness has both metaphysical and epistemological components. The metaphysical problem with objective values concerns ‘the metaphysical peculiarity of the supposed objective values, in that they would have to be intrinsically action-guiding and motivating’ (49). The epistemological problem concerns ‘the difficulty of accounting for our knowledge of value entities or features and of their links with the features on which they would be consequential’ (49). Let's look at each type of worry more closely in turn.

Expounding the metaphysical part of the argument from queerness, Mackie writes: “If there were objective values, then they would be entities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.” (38) What is so strange about them? Mackie says that Plato's Forms (and for that matter, Moore's non-natural qualities) give us a ‘dramatic picture’ of what objective values would be, if there were any:

The Form of the Good is such that knowledge of it provides the knower with both a direction and an overriding motive; something's being good both tells the person who knows this to pursue it and makes him pursue it. An objective good would be sought by anyone who was acquainted with it, not because of any contingent fact that this person, or every person, is so constituted that he desires this end, but just because the end has to-be-pursuedness somehow built into it. Similarly, if there were objective principles of right and wrong, any wrong (possible) course of action would have not-to-be-doneness somehow built into it. Or we should have something like Clarke's necessary relations of fitness between situations and actions, so that a situation would have a demand for such-and-such an action somehow built into it (40).

The obtaining of a moral state of affairs would be the obtaining of a situation ‘with a demand for such and such an action somehow built into it’; the states of affairs which we find in the world do not have such demands built into them, they are ‘normatively inert’, as it were. Thus, the world contains no moral states of affairs, situations which consist in the instantiation of a moral quality.

Mackie now backs up this metaphysical argument with an epistemological argument:

If we were aware [of objective values], it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ways of knowing everything else. These points were recognised by Moore when he spoke of non-natural qualities, and by the intuitionists in their talk about a faculty of moral intuition. Intuitionism has long been out of favour, and it is indeed easy to point out its implausibilities. What is not so often stressed, but is more important, is that the central thesis of intuitionism is one to which any objectivist view of values is in the end committed: intuitionism merely makes unpalatably plain what other forms of objectivism wrap up (38).

In short, our ordinary conceptions of how we might come into cognitive contact with states of affairs, and thereby acquire knowledge of them, cannot cope with the idea that the states of affairs are objective values. So we are forced to expand that ordinary conception to include forms of moral perception and intuition. But these are completely unexplanatory: they are really just placeholders for our capacity to form correct moral judgements (the reader should here hear an echo of the complaints Benacerraf and Field raise against arithmetical platonism).

Evaluating the argument from queerness is well outwith the scope of the present entry. While Railton's version of moral realism attempts to block Mackie's overall argument by conceding his ontological claim whilst rejecting his conceptual claim, other versions of moral realism agree with Mackie's conceptual claim but reject his ontological claim. Examples of the latter version, and attempts to provide the owed response to the argument from queerness, can be found in Smith (1994), Ch.6, and McDowell (1998a), Chs 4–10.

There are two main ways in which one might respond to Mackie's argument for the error-theory: directly, via contesting one of its premises or inferences, or indirectly, pointing to some internal tension within the error-theory itself. Some possible direct responses have already been mentioned, responses which reject either the conceptual or ontological claims that feature as premises in Mackie's argument for the error-theory. An indirect argument against the error-theory has been developed in recent writings by Crispin Wright (this argument is intended to apply also to Field's error-theory of arithmetic).

Mackie claims that the error-theory of moral judgement is a second-order theory, which does not necessarily have implications for the first order practice of making moral judgements (1977: 16). Wright's argument against the error-theory takes off with the forceful presentation of the opposing suspicion:

The great discomfort with [Mackie's] view is that, unless more is said, it simply relegates moral discourse to bad faith. Whatever we may once have thought, as soon as philosophy has taught us that the world is unsuited to confer truth on any of our claims about what is right, or wrong, or obligatory, etc., the reasonable response ought surely to be to forgo the right to making any such claims …. If it is of the essence of moral judgement to aim at the truth, and if philosophy teaches us that there is no moral truth to hit, how are we supposed to take ourselves seriously in thinking the way we do about any issue which we regard as of major moral importance? (1996: 2; see also 1992: 9).

Wright realises that the error-theorist is likely to have a story to tell about the point of moral discourse, about “some norm of appraisal besides truth, at which its statements can be seen as aimed, and which they can satisfy.” (1996: 2) And Mackie has such a story: the point of moral discourse is—to simplify—to secure the benefits of social co-operation (1973: chapter 5 passim; note that this is the analogue in Mackie's theory of Field's notion of the conservativeness of mathematical theories). Suppose we can extract from this story some subsidiary norm distinct from truth, which governs the practice of forming moral judgements. Then, for example, ‘Honesty is good’ and ‘Dishonesty is good’, although both false, will not be on a par in point of their contribution to the satisfaction of the subsidiary norm: if accepted widely enough, the former will presumably facilitate the satisfaction of the subsidiary norm, while the latter, if accepted widely enough, will frustrate it. Wright questions whether Mackie's moral sceptic can plausibly combine such a story about the benefits of the practice of moral judgement with the central negative claim of the error-theory:

[I]f, among the welter of falsehoods which we enunciate in moral discourse, there is a good distinction to be drawn between those which are acceptable in the light of some such subsidiary norm and those which are not—a distinction which actually informs ordinary discussion and criticism of moral claims—then why insist on construing truth for moral discourse in terms which motivate a charge of global error, rather than explicate it in terms of the satisfaction of the putative subsidiary norm, whatever it is? The question may have a good answer. The error-theorist may be able to argue that the superstition that he finds in ordinary moral thought goes too deep to permit of any construction of moral truth which avoids it to be acceptable as an account of moral truth. But I do not know of promising argument in that direction (1996: 3; see also 1992: 10).

Wright thus argues that even if we concede to the error-theorist that his original scepticism about moral truth is well-founded, the error-theorist's own positive proposal will be inherently unstable. For an attempt to respond to Wright's argument on behalf of the error-theorist, see Miller 2002. In recent years, inspired by error-theory, philosophers have developed forms of moral fictionalism, according to which moral claims either are or ought to be “useful fictions”. See Kalderon 2005 and Joyce 2001 for examples. For a book-length treatment of moral error-theory, see Olson 2014.

The error-theories proposed by Mackie and Field are non-eliminativist error-theories, and should be contrasted with the kind of eliminativist error-theory proposed by e.g. Paul Churchland concerning folk-psychological propositional attitudes (see Churchland 1981). Churchland argues that our everyday talk of propositional attitudes such as beliefs, desires and intentions should eventually be abandoned given developments in neuroscience. Mackie and Field make no analogous claims concerning morality and arithmetic: no claim, that is, to the effect that they will one day be in principle replaceable by philosophically hygienic counterparts.

Although some commentators (e.g. Pettit 1991) require that a realistic view of a subject matter be non-reductionist about the distinctive objects, properties, and facts of that subject matter, the reductionist/non-reductionist issue is really orthogonal to the various debates about realism. There are a number of reasons for this, with the reasons varying depending on the type of reduction proposed.

Suppose, first of all, that one wished to deny the existence claim which is a component of platonic realism about arithmetic. One way to do this would be to propose an analytic reduction of talk seemingly involving abstract entities to talk concerning only concrete entities. This can be illustrated by considering a language the truth of whose sentences seemingly entails the existence of a type of abstract object, directions. Suppose there is a first order language L, containing a range of proper names ‘ a ’, ‘ b ’, ‘ c ’, and so on, where these denote straight lines conceived as concrete inscriptions. There are also predicates and relations defined on straight lines, including ‘ … is parallel to …’. ‘ D ( )’ is a singular term forming operator on lines, so that inserting the name of a concrete line, as in ‘ D ( a )’, produces a singular term standing for an abstract object, the direction of a . A number of contextual definitions are now introduced:

(A) ‘ D ( a ) = D ( b )’ is true if and only if a is parallel to b . (B) ‘Π D ( x )’ is true if and only if ‘ Fx ’ is true, where ‘… is parallel to …’ is a congruence for ‘ F ( )’. (To say that ‘… is parallel to …’ is a congruence for ‘ F ( )’ is to say that if a is parallel to b and Fa , then it follows that Fb ). (C) ‘(∃ x )Π x ’ is true if and only if ‘(∃ x ) Fx ’ is true, where ‘Π’ and ‘ F ’ are as in (B).

According to a platonic realist, directions exist and have a nature which is independent of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on. But doesn't the availability of (A), (B), and (C) undermine the existence claim at the heart of platonic realism? After all, (A), (B), and (C) allow us to paraphrase any sentence whose truth appears to entail the existence of abstract objects into a sentence whose truth involves only the existence of concrete inscriptions. Doesn't this show that an analytic reduction can aid someone wishing to question the existence claim involved in a particular form of realism? There is a powerful argument, first developed by William Alston (1958), and recently resuscitated to great effect by Crispin Wright (1983, Ch.1), that suggests not. The analytic reductionist who wishes to wield the contextual definitions against the existence claim at the heart of platonic realism takes them to show that the apparent reference to abstract objects on the left-hand sides of the definitions is merely apparent: in fact, the truth of the relevant sentences entails only the existence of a range of concrete inscriptions. But the platonic realist can retort: what the contextual definitions show is that the apparent lack of reference to abstract objects on the right-hand sides is merely apparent. In fact, the platonic realist can say, the truth of the sentences figuring on the right-hand sides implicitly involves reference to abstract objects. If there is no way to break this deadlock the existence of the analytic reductive paraphrases will leave the existence claim at the heart of the relevant form of realism untouched. So the issue of this style of reductionism appears to be orthogonal to debates between realists and non-realists.

Can the same be said about non-analytic styles of reductionism? Again, there is no straightforward connection between the issue of reductionism and the issue of realism. The problem is that, to borrow some terminology and examples from Railton 1989, some reductions will be vindicative whilst others will be eliminativist . For example, the reduction of water to H 2 0 is vindicative: it vindicates our belief that there is such a thing as water, rather than overturning it. On the other hand:

… the reduction of ‘polywater’—a peculiar form of water thought to have been observed in laboratories in the 1960's—to ordinary-water-containing-some-impurities-from-improperly-washed-glassware contributed to the conclusion that there really is no such substance as polywater (1989: 161).

Thus, a non-analytic reduction may or may not have implications for the existence dimension of a realistic view of a particular subject matter. And even if the existence dimension is vindicated, there is still the further question whether the objects and properties vindicated are independent of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, and so on. Again, there is no straightforward relationship between the issue of reductionism and the issue of realism.

We saw above that for the subject-matter in question the error-theorist agrees with the realist that the truth of the atomic, declarative sentences of that area requires the existence of the relevant type of objects, or the instantiation of the relevant sorts of properties. Although the realist and the error-theorist agree on this much, they of course disagree on the question of whether the relevant type of objects exist, or on whether the relevant sorts of properties are instantiated: the error-theorist claims that they don't, so that the atomic, declarative sentences of the area are systematically and uniformly false, the realist claims that at least in some instances the relevant objects exist or the relevant properties are instantiated, so that the atomic, declarative sentences of the area are at least in some instances true. We also saw that an error-theory about a particular area could be motivated by epistemological worries (Field) or by a combination of epistemological and metaphysical worries (Mackie).

Another way in which the existence dimension of realism can be resisted is via expressivism. Whereas the realist and the error-theorist agree that the sentences of the relevant area are truth-apt , apt to be assessed in terms of truth and falsity, the realist and the expressivist (alternatively non-cognitivist, projectivist) disagree about the truth-aptness of those sentences. It is a fact about English that sentences in the declarative mood (‘The beer is in the fridge’) are conventionally used for making assertions, and assertions are true or false depending on whether or not the fact that is asserted to obtain actually obtains. But there are other grammatical moods that are conventionally associated with different types of speech-act. For example, sentences in the imperatival mood (‘Put the beer in the fridge’) are conventionally used for giving orders, and sentences in the interrogative mood (‘Is the beer in the fridge?’) are conventionally used for asking questions. Note that we would not ordinarily think of orders or questions as even apt for assessment in terms of truth and falsity: they are not truth-apt. Now the conventions mentioned here are not exceptionless: for example, one can use sentences in the declarative mood (‘My favourite drink is Belhaven 60 shilling’) to give an order (for some Belhaven 60 shilling), one can use sentences in the interrogative mood (‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’) to make an assertion (of whatever fact was the subject of the discussion), and so on. The expressivist about a particular area will claim that the realist is misled by the syntax of the sentences of that area into thinking that they are truth-apt: she will say that this is a case where the conventional association of the declarative mood with assertoric force breaks down. In the moral case the expressivist can claim that ‘Stealing is wrong’ is no more truth-apt than ‘Put the beer in the fridge’: it is just that the lack of truth-aptness of the latter is worn on its sleeve, while the lack of truth-aptness of the former is veiled by its surface syntax.(There are some important issues concerning the relationship between minimalism about truth-aptitude and expressivism that we cannot go into here. See Divers and Miller (1995)and Miller (2013b) for some pointers. There are also some important differences between e.g. Ayer's emotivism and more modern forms of expressivism (such as those developed by Blackburn and Gibbard) that we gloss over here. For a useful account, see Schroeder 2009).

So, if moral sentences are not conventionally used for the making of assertions, what are they conventionally used for? According to one classical form of expressivism, emotivism , they are conventionally used for the expression of emotion, feeling, or sentiment. Thus, A.J. Ayer writes:

If I say to someone, ‘You acted wrongly in stealing that money’, I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, ‘You stole that money’. In adding that this action is wrong, I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval about it. It is as if I had said, ‘You stole that money’, in a peculiar tone of horror, or written with the addition of some special exclamation marks. The tone, or the exclamation marks, adds nothing to the literal meaning of the sentence. It merely serves to show that the expression of it is attended by certain feelings in the speaker (Ayer 1946: 107, emphases added).

It follows from this that:

If I now generalise my previous statement and say, ‘Stealing money is wrong,’ I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning—that is, expresses no proposition that can be either true or false (1946: 107).

Emotivism faces many problems, discussion of which is not possible here (for a survey, see Miller 2003a Ch.3). One problem that has been the bugbear of all expressivist versions of non-realism, the ‘Frege-Geach Problem’, is so-called because the classic modern formulation is by Peter Geach (1960), who attributes the original point to Frege.

According to emotivism, when I sincerely utter the sentence ‘Murder is wrong’ I am not expressing a belief or making an assertion, but rather expressing some non-cognitive sentiment or feeling, incapable of being true or false. Thus, the emotivist claims that in contexts where ‘Murder is wrong’ is apparently being used to assert that murder is wrong it is in fact being used to express a sentiment or feeling of disapproval towards murder. But what about contexts in which it is not even apparently the case that ‘Murder is wrong’ is being used to make an assertion? An example of such a sentence would be ‘If murder is wrong, then getting little brother to murder people is wrong’. In the antecedent of this ‘Murder is wrong’ is clearly not even apparently being used to make an assertion. So what account can the emotivist give of the use of ‘Murder is wrong’ within ‘unasserted contexts’, such as the antecedent of the conditional above? Since it is not there used to express disapproval of murder, the account of its semantic function must be different from that given for the apparently straightforward assertion expressed by ‘Murder is wrong’. But now there is a problem in accounting for the following apparently valid inference:

(1) Murder is wrong. (2) If Murder is wrong, then getting your little brother to murder people is wrong. Therefore: (3) Getting your little brother to murder people is wrong.

If the semantic function of ‘Murder is wrong’ as it occurs within an asserted context in (1) is different from its semantic function as it occurs within an unasserted context in (2), isn't someone arguing in this way simply guilty of equivocation? In order for the argument to be valid, the occurrence of ‘Murder is wrong’ in (1) has to mean the same thing as the occurrence of ‘Murder is wrong’ in (2). But if ‘Murder is wrong’ has a different semantic function in (1) and (2), then it certainly doesn't mean the same thing in (1) and (2). So the above argument is apparently no more valid than:

(4) My beer has a head on it. (5) If something has a head on it, then it must have eyes and ears. Therefore: (6) My beer must have eyes and ears.

This argument is obviously invalid, because it relies on an equivocation on two senses of ‘head’, in (4) and (5) respectively.

It is perhaps worth stressing why the Frege-Geach problem doesn't afflict ethical theories which see ‘Murder is wrong’ as truth-apt, and sincere utterances of ‘Murder is wrong’ as capable of expressing straightforwardly truth-assessable beliefs. According to theories like these, moral modus ponens arguments such as the argument above from (1) and (2) to (3) are just like non-moral cases of modus ponens such as

(7) It is raining; (8) If it is raining then the streets are wet; Therefore, (9) the streets are wet.

Why is this non-moral case of modus ponens not similarly invalid in virtue of the fact that ‘It is raining’ is asserted in (7), but not in (8)? The answer is of course that the state of affairs asserted to obtain by ‘It is raining’ in (7) is the same as that whose obtaining is merely entertained in the antecedent of (8). In (7) ‘It is raining’ is used to assert that a state of affairs obtains (it's raining), and in (8) it is asserted that if that state of affairs obtains, so does another (the streets being wet). Throughout, the semantic function of the sentences concerned is given in terms of the states of affairs asserted to obtain in simple assertoric contexts. And it is difficult to see how an emotivist can say anything analogous to this with respect to the argument from (1) and (2) to (3): it is difficult to see how the semantic function of ‘Murder is wrong’ in the antecedent of (2) could be given in terms of the sentiment it allegedly expresses in (1).

The Frege-Geach challenge to the emotivist is thus to answer the following question: how can you give an emotivist account of the occurrence of moral sentences in ‘unasserted contexts’—such as the antecedents of conditionals—without jeopardising the intuitively valid patterns of inference in which those sentences figure? Philosophers wishing to develop an expressivistic alternative to moral realism have expended a great deal of energy and ingenuity in devising responses to this challenge. See in particular Blackburn's development of ‘quasi-realism’, in his (1984) Chs 5 and 6, (1993) Ch.10, (1998) Ch.3 and Gibbard's ‘norm-expressivism’, in his (1990) Ch.5, and further refined in his (2003). For criticism see Hale (1993) and (2002), and Kölbel (2002) Ch.4. For an overview, see Schroeder (2008) and Miller (2013a), Chs 4 and 5. For very useful surveys of recent work on expressivism, see Schroeder (2009) and Sinclair (2009).

Challenges to the existence dimension of realism have been outlined in previous sections. In this section some forms of non-realism that are neither error-theoretic nor expressivist will be briefly introduced. The forms of non-realism view the sentences of the relevant area as (against the expressivist) truth-apt, and (against the error-theorist) at least sometimes true. The existence dimension of realism is thus left intact. What is challenged is the independence dimension of realism, the claim that the objects distinctive of the area exist, or that the properties distinctive of the area are instantiated, independently of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on.

Classically, opposition to the independence dimension of realism about the everyday world of macroscopic objects took the form of idealism , the view that the objects of the everyday world of macroscopic objects are in some sense mental . As Berkeley famously claimed, tables, chairs, cats, the moons of Jupiter and so on, are nothing but ideas in the minds of spirits:

All the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind (Berkeley 1710: §6).

Idealism has long been out of favour in contemporary philosophy, but those who doubt the independence dimension of realism have sought more sophisticated ways of opposing it. One such philosopher, Michael Dummett, has suggested that in some cases it may be appropriate to reject the independence dimension of realism via the rejection of semantic realism about the area in question (see Dummett 1978 and 1993). This section contains a brief explanation of semantic realism, as characterised by Dummett, Dummett's views on the relationship between semantic realism and realism construed as a metaphysical thesis, and an outline of some of the arguments in the philosophy of language that Dummett has suggested might be wielded against semantic realism.

It is easiest to characterise semantic realism for a mathematical domain. It is a feature of arithmetic that there are some arithmetical sentences for which the following holds true: we know of no method that will guarantee us a proof of the sentence, and we know of no method that will guarantee us a disproof or a counterexample either. One such is Goldbach's Conjecture:

(G) Every even number is the sum of two primes.

It is possible that we may come across a proof, or a counterexample, but the key point is that we do not know a method, or methods, the application of which is guaranteed to yield one or the other. A semantic realist, in Dummett's sense, is one who holds that our understanding of a sentence like (G) consists in knowledge of its truth-condition, where the notion of truth involved is potentially recognition-transcendent or bivalent . To say that the notion of truth involved is potentially recognition-transcendent is to say that (G) may be true (or false) even though there is no guarantee that we will be able, in principle, to recognise that that is so. To say that the notion of truth involved is bivalent is to accept the unrestricted applicability of the law of bivalence, that every meaningful sentence is determinately either true or false. Thus the semantic realist is prepared to assert that (G) is determinately either true or false, regardless of the fact that we have no guaranteed method of ascertaining which. (Note that the precise relationship between the characterisation in terms of bivalence and that in terms of potentially recognition-transcendent truth is a delicate matter that will not concern us here. See the Introduction to Wright 1993 for some excellent discussion. It is also important to note that in introducing the idea that a speaker's understanding of a sentence consists in her knowledge of its truth-condition, Dummett is packing more into the notion of truth than the disquotational properties made use of in §1 above. See Dummett's essay ‘Truth’, in his 1978).

Dummett makes two main claims about semantic realism. First, there is what Devitt (1991a) has termed the metaphor thesis : This denies that we can even have a literal, austerely metaphysical characterisation of realism of the sort attempted above with Generic Realism. Dummett writes, of the attempt to give an austere metaphysical characterisation of realism about mathematics (platonic realism) and what stands opposed to it (intuitionism):

How [are] we to decide this dispute over the ontological status of mathematical objects[?] As I have remarked, we have here two metaphors: the platonist compares the mathematician with the astronomer, the geographer or the explorer, the intuitionist compares him with the sculptor or the imaginative writer; and neither comparison seems very apt. The disagreement evidently relates to the amount of freedom that the mathematician has. Put this way, however, both seem partly right and partly wrong: the mathematician has great freedom in devising the concepts he introduces and in delineating the structure he chooses to study, but he cannot prove just whatever he decides it would be attractive to prove. How are we to make the disagreement into a definite one, and how can we then resolve it? (1978: xxv).

According to the constitution thesis , the literal content of realism consists in the content of semantic realism. Thus, the literal content of realism about the external world is constituted by the claim that our understanding of at least some sentences concerning the external world consists in our grasp of their potentially recognition-transcendent truth-conditions. The spurious ‘debate’ in metaphysics between realism and non-realism can thus become a genuine debate within the theory of meaning: should we characterise speakers' understanding in terms of grasp of potentially recognition-transcendent truth-conditions? As Dummett puts it:

The dispute [between realism and its opponents] concerns the notion of truth appropriate for statements of the disputed class; and this means that it is a dispute concerning the kind of meaning which these statements have (1978: 146).

Few have been convinced by either the metaphor thesis or the constitution thesis. Consider Generic Realism in the case of the world of everyday macroscopic objects and properties:

(GR1) Tables, rocks, mountains, seas, and so on exist, and the fact that they exist and have properties such as mass, size, shape, colour, and so on, is (apart from mundane empirical dependencies of the sort sometimes encountered in everyday life) independent of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on.

Dummett may well call for some non-metaphorical characterisation of the independence claim which this involves, but it is relatively easy to provide one such characterisation by utilising Dummett's own notion of recognition-transcendence:

(GR2) Tables, rocks, mountains, seas, and so on exist, and the fact that they exist and have properties such as mass, size, shape,colour, and so on, is (apart from mundane empirical dependencies of the sort sometimes encountered in everyday life) independent of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on. Tables, rocks, mountains, seas, and so on exist, and in general there is no guarantee that we will be able, even in principle, to recognise the fact that they exist and have properties such as mass, size, shape, colour, and so on.

On the face of it, there is nothing metaphorical in (GR2) or, at least if there is, some argument from Dummett to that effect is required. This throws some doubt on the metaphor thesis. And there is nothing distinctively semantic about (GR2), and this throws some doubt on the constitution thesis. Whereas for Dummett, the essential realist thesis is the meaning-theoretic claim that our understanding of a sentence like (G) consists in knowledge of its potentially recognition-transcendent truth-condition, for Devitt:

What has truth to do with Realism? On the face of it, nothing at all. Indeed, Realism says nothing semantic at all beyond … making the negative point that our semantic capacities do not constitute the world. (1991a: 39)

Devitt's main criticism of the constitution thesis is this: the literal content of realism about the external world is not given by semantic realism, since semantic realism is consistent with an idealist metaphysics of the external world. He writes:

Does [semantic realism] entail Realism? It does not. Realism … requires the objective independent existence of common-sense physical entities. Semantic Realism concerns physical statements and has no such requirement: it says nothing about the nature of the reality that makes those statements true or false , except that it is [at least in part potentially beyond the reach of our best investigative efforts]. An idealist who believed in the … existence of a purely mental realm of sense-data could subscribe to [semantic realism]. He could believe that physical statements are true or false according as they do or do not correspond to the realm of sense-data, whatever anyone's opinion on the matter: we have no ‘incorrigible knowledge’ of sense-data. … In sum, mere talk of truth will not yield any particular ontology. (1983: 77)

Suppose that Dummett's metaphor and constitution theses are both implausible. Would it follow that the arguments Dummett develops against semantic realism have no relevance to debates about the plausibility of realism about everyday macroscopic objects (say), construed as a purely metaphysical thesis as in (GR2)? It can be argued that Dummett's arguments can retain their relevance to a metaphysical debate even if the metaphor and constitution theses are false, and, indeed, even if Dummett's view (1973: 669) that the theory of meaning is the foundation of all philosophy is rejected. For a full development of this line of argument, see Miller 2003b and 2006.

Dummett has two main lines of argument against semantic realism, the acquisition argument and the manifestation argument . Here is the acquisition argument:

Suppose that we are considering some region of discourse D , the sentences of which we intuitively understand. Suppose, for reductio , that the sentences of D have potentially recognition-transcendent truth-conditions. Thus,

(1) We understand the sentences of D . (2) The sentences of D have recognition-transcendent truth-conditions.

Now, from (1) together with the Fregean thesis that to understand a sentence is to know its truth-conditions (see Miller 2007, Chs 1 and 2), we have:

(3) We know the truth-conditions of the sentences of D .

We now add the apparently reasonable constraint on ascriptions of knowledge:

(4) If a piece of knowledge is ascribed to a speaker, then it must be at least in principle possible for that speaker to have acquired that knowledge.

(5) It must be at least in principle possible for us to have acquired knowledge of the recognition-transcendent truth-conditions of D .

(6) We could not have acquired knowledge of recognition-transcendent truth-conditions.

So, by reductio , we reject (2) to get:

(7) The sentences of D do not have recognition-transcendent truth-conditions, so semantic realism about the subject matter of D must be rejected.

The crucial premise here is obviously (6). Wright suggests that there is no plausible story to be told about how we could have acquired knowledge of recognition-transcendent truth-conditions:

How are we supposed to be able to form any understanding of what it is for a particular statement to be true if the kind of state of affairs which it would take to make it true is conceived, ex hypothesi , as something beyond our experience, something which we cannot confirm and which is insulated from any distinctive impact on our consciousness? (1993: 13).

However, Wright then more or less concedes that the acquisition argument can be neutralised by invoking the compositionality of meaning and understanding:

[T]he realist seems to have a very simple answer. Given that the understanding of statements in general is to be viewed as consisting in possession of a concept of their truth-conditions, acquiring a concept of an evidence-transcendent state of affairs is simply a matter of acquiring an understanding of a statement for which that state of affairs would constitute the truth-condition. And such an understanding is acquired, like the understanding of any previously unheard sentence in the language, by understanding the constituent words and the significance of their mode of combination. (1993: 16)

Dummett's challenge to semantic realism, then, turns on his second argument, the manifestation argument . Suppose that we are considering region of discourse D as before. Then:

(1) We understand the sentences of D .

Suppose, for reductio , that

(2) The sentences of D have recognition-transcendent truth-conditions.

From (1) and the Fregean thesis that to understand a sentence is to know its truth-conditions, we have:

We then add the following premise, which stems from the Wittgensteinian insight that understanding does not consist in the possession of an inner state, but rather in the possession of some practical ability (see Wittgenstein 1958):

(4) If speakers possess a piece of knowledge which is constitutive of linguistic understanding, then that knowledge should be manifested in speakers' use of the language i.e. in their exercise of the practical abilities which constitute linguistic understanding.

For example, in the case of a simple language consisting of demonstratives and taste predicates (such as "bitter" and "sweet"), applied to foodstuffs within reach of the speaker, a speaker's understanding consists in his ability to determine whether "this is bitter" is true, by putting the relevant foodstuff in his mouth and tasting it (Wright 1993).

It now follows from (1), (2), (3) and (4) that:

(5) Our knowledge of the recognition-transcendent truth-conditions of the sentences of D should be manifested in our use of those sentences, i.e. in our exercise of the practical abilities which constitute our understanding of D . Since (6) Such knowledge is never manifested in the exercise of the practical abilities which constitute our understanding of D ,

It follows that

(7) We do not possess knowledge of the truth-conditions of D .

(7) and (3) together give us a contradiction, whence, by reductio , we reject (2) to obtain:

(8) The sentences of D do not have recognition-transcendent truth-conditions, so semantic realism about the subject matter of D must be rejected.

The key claim here is (6). So far as an account of speakers' understanding goes, the ascription of knowledge of recognition-transcendent truth-conditions is simply redundant : there is no good reason for ascribing it. Consider one of the sentences introduced earlier as a candidate for possessing recognition-transcendent truth-conditions ‘Every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes’. The semantic realist views our understanding of sentences like this as consisting in our knowledge of a potentially recognition-transcendent truth-condition. But:

How can that account be viewed as a description of any practical ability of use? No doubt someone who understands such a statement can be expected to have many relevant practical abilities. He will be able to appraise evidence for or against it, should any be available, or to recognize that no information in his possession bears on it. He will be able to recognize at least some of its logical consequences, and to identify beliefs from which commitment to it would follow. And he will, presumably, show himself sensitive to conditions under which it is appropriate to ascribe propositional attitudes embedding the statement to himself and to others, and sensitive to the explanatory significance of such ascriptions. In short: in these and perhaps other important respects, he will show himself competent to use the sentence. But the headings under which his practical abilities fall so far involve no mention of evidence-transcendent truth-conditions (Wright 1993: 17).

This establishes (6), and the conclusion follows swiftly.

A detailed assessment of the plausibility of Dummett's arguments is impossible here. For a full response to the manifestation argument, see Miller 2002. See also Byrne 2005. For the acquisition argument, see Miller 2003c. Wright develops a couple of additional arguments against semantic realism. For these—the argument from rule-following and the argument from normativity—see the Introduction to Wright 1993. For an excellent survey of the literature on Dummett's arguments against semantic realism, see Hale 1997. For an excellent book-length introduction to Dummett's philosophy, see Weiss 2002.

7. Against the Independence Dimension (II): More Forms of Anti-Realism

Suppose that one wished to develop a non-realist alternative to, say, moral realism. Suppose also that one is persuaded of the unattractiveness of both error-theoretic and expressivist forms of non-realism. That is to say, one accepts that moral sentences are truth-apt, and, at least in some cases, true. Then the only option available would be to deny the independence dimension of moral realism. But so far we have only seen one way of doing this: by admitting that the relevant sentences are truth-apt, sometimes true, and possessed of truth-conditions which are not potentially recognition-transcendent. But this seems weak: it seems implausible to suggest that a moral realist must be committed to the potential recognition-transcendence of moral truth. It therefore seems implausible to suggest that a non-expressivistic and non-error-theoretic form of opposition to realism must be committed to simply denying the potential recognition-transcendence of moral truth, since many who style themselves moral realists will deny this too. As Wright puts it:

There are, no doubt, kinds of moral realism which do have the consequence that moral reality may transcend all possibility of detection. But it is surely not essential to any view worth regarding as realist about morals that it incorporate a commitment to that idea. (1992: 9)

So, if the debate between a realist and a non-realist about the independence dimension doesn't concern the plausibility of semantic realism as characterised by Dummett, what does it concern? (Henceforth a non-error-theoretic, non-expressivist style of non-realist is referred to as an anti-realist). Wright attempts to develop some points of contention, (or ‘realism-relevant cruces’ as he calls them) over which a realist and anti-realist could disagree. Wright's development of this idea is subtle and sophisticated and only a crude exposition of a couple of his realism-relevant cruces can be given here.

The first of Wright's realism-relevant cruces to be considered here concerns the capacity of states of affairs to figure ineliminably in the explanation of features of our experience. The idea that the explanatory efficacy of the states of affairs in some area has something to do with the plausibility of a realist view of that area is familiar from the debates in meta-ethics between philosophers such as Nicholas Sturgeon (1988), who believe that irreducibly moral states of affairs do figure ineliminably in the best explanation of certain aspects of experience, and opponents such as Gilbert Harman (1977), who believe that moral states of affairs have no such explanatory role. This suggests a ‘best explanation test’ which, crudely put, states that realism about a subject matter can be secured if its distinctive states of affairs figure ineliminably in the best explanation of aspects of experience. One could then be a non-expressivist, non-error-theoretic, anti-realist about a particular subject matter by denying that the distinctive states of affairs of that subject matter do have a genuine role in best explanations of aspects of our experience. And the debate between this style of anti-realist and his realist opponent could proceed independently of any questions concerning the capacity of sentences in the relevant area to have potentially recognition-transcendent truth values.

For reasons that needn't detain us here, Wright suggests that this ‘best explanation test’ should be superseded by questions concerning what he calls width of cosmological role (1992, Ch.5). The states of affairs in a given area have narrow cosmological role if it is a priori that they do not contribute to the explanation of things other than our beliefs about that subject-matter (or other than via explaining our beliefs about that subject matter). This will be an anti-realist position. One style of realist about that subject matter will say that its states of affairs have wide cosmological role: they do contribute to the explanation of things other than our beliefs about the subject matter in question (or other than via explaining our beliefs about that subject matter). It is relatively easy to see why width of cosmological role could be a bone of contention between realist and anti-realist views of a given subject matter: it is precisely the width of cosmological role of a class of states of affairs—their capacity to explain things other than, or other than via, our beliefs, in which their independence from our beliefs, linguistic practices, and so on, consists. Again, the debate between someone attributing a narrow cosmological role to a class of states of affairs and someone attributing a wide cosmological role could proceed independently of any questions concerning the capacity of sentences in the relevant area to have potentially recognition-transcendent truth values.

Wright thinks that it is arguable that moral discourse does not satisfy width-of-cosmological role. Whereas a physical fact—such as a pond's being frozen over—can contribute to the explanation of cognitive effects (someone's believing that the pond is frozen over), effects on sentient, but non-conceptual creatures (the tendency of goldfish to cluster towards the bottom of the pond), effects on us as physically interactive agents (someone's slipping on the ice), and effects on inanimate matter (the tendency of a thermometer to read zero when placed on the surface), moral facts can only to contribute to the explanation of the first sort of effect:

[I]t is hard to think of anything which is true of sentient but non-conceptual creatures, or of mobile organisms, or of inanimate matter, which is true because a … moral fact obtains and in whose explanation it is unnecessary to advert to anyone's appreciation of that moral fact (1996: 16).

Thus, we have a version of anti-realism about morals that is non-expressivist and non-error-theoretic and can be framed independently of considerations about the potential of moral sentences to have recognition-transcendent truth-values: moral sentences are truth-apt, sometimes true, and moral states of affairs have narrow cosmological role.

The second of Wright's realism-relevant cruces concerns judgement-dependence. Suppose that we are considering a region of discourse D in which ‘ P ’ is a representative central predicate. Consider the opinions formed by the practitioners of that discourse, formed under cognitively ideal conditions: call such opinions best opinions , and the cognitively ideal conditions the C-conditions. Suppose that the best opinions covary with the facts about the instantiation of ‘ P ’. Then there are two ways in which we can explain this covariance. First, we might take best opinions to be playing at most a tracking role: best opinions are just extremely good at tracking independently constituted truth-conferring states of affairs. In this case, best opinion plays only an extension-reflecting role, merely reflecting the independently determined extensions of the central predicates of D . Alternatively, we might try to explain the covariance of best opinion and fact by viewing best opinion as playing a different sort of role. Rather than viewing best opinion as merely tracking the facts about the extensions of the central predicates of D , we can view them as themselves determining those extensions. Best opinions, on this sort of view, do not just track independently constituted states of affairs which determine the extensions of the central predicates of D : rather, they determine those extensions and so to play an extension-determining role. When we have this latter sort of explanation of the covariance of best opinion and fact, the predicates of that region are said to be judgement-dependent ; when we have only the former sort of explanation, the predicates are said to be judgement-independent .

How do we determine whether the central predicates of a region of discourse are judgement-dependent? Wright's discussion proceeds by reference to what he terms provisional equations . These have the following form:

(PE) ∀ x [ C → (A suitable subject s judges that Px ↔ Px )]

where ‘ C ’ denotes the conditions (the C -conditions) which are cognitively ideal for forming the judgement that x is P . The predicate ‘P’ is then said to be judgement-dependent if and only if the provisional equation meets the following four conditions:

The A Prioricity Condition: The provisional equation must be a priori true: there must be a priori covariance of best opinions and truth. (Justification: ‘the truth, if it is true, that the extensions of [a class of concept] are constrained by idealised human response—best opinion—ought to be available purely by analytic reflection on those concepts, and hence available as knowledge a priori ’ (Wright 1992: 117)). This is because the thesis of judgement-dependence is the claim that, for the region of discourse concerned, best opinion is the conceptual ground of truth). The Substantiality Condition The C -conditions must be specifiable non-trivially : they cannot simply be described as conditions under which the subject has ‘whatever it takes' to form the right opinion concerning the subject matter at hand.(Justification: without this condition, any predicate will turn out to be judgement-dependent, since for any predicate Q it is going to be an a priori truth that our judgements about whether x is Q , formed under conditions which have ‘whatever it takes' to ensure their correctness, will covary with the facts about the instantiation of Q -ness. We thus require this condition on pain of losing the distinction between judgement-dependent and judgement-independent predicates altogether). The Independence Condition : The question as to whether the C -conditions obtain in a given instance must be logically independent of the class of truths for which we are attempting to give an extension-determining account: for specifying what makes an opinion best must not presuppose some logically prior determination of the extensions putatively determined by best opinions. (Justification: if we have to assume, say, certain facts about the extension of P in the determination of the conditions under which opinions about P count as best, then we cannot view best opinions as somehow constituting those facts, since specifying whether a given opinion is best would then presuppose some logically prior determination of the very facts allegedly constituted by best opinions). The Extremal Condition : There must be no better way of accounting for the a priori covariance: no better account, other than according best opinion an extension-determining role, of which the satisfaction of the foregoing three conditions is a consequence. (Justification: without this condition, the satisfaction of the foregoing conditions would be consistent with the thought that certain states of affairs are judgement-independent even though infallibly detectable, 'states of affairs in whose determination facts about the deliverances of best opinions are in no way implicated although there is, a priori, no possibility of their misrepresentation’ (Wright 1992: 123)).

When all of the above conditions can be shown to be satisfied, we can accord best opinion an extension-determining role, and describe the subject matter as judgement-dependent. If these conditions cannot collectively be satisfied, best opinion can be assigned, at best, a merely extension-reflecting role.

Two points are worth making. First, it is again relatively easy to see why the question of judgement-dependence can mark a bone of contention between realism and anti-realism. If a subject matter is judgement-dependent we have a concrete sense in which the independence dimension of realism fails for that subject matter: there is a sense in which that subject matter is not entirely independent of our beliefs, linguistic practices, and so on. Second, the debate about the judgement-dependence of a subject matter is, on the face of it at least, independent of the debate about the possibility of recognition-transcendent truth in that area.

Wright argues (1989) that facts about colours and intentions are judgement-dependent, so that we can formulate a version of anti-realism about colours (intentions) that views ascriptions of colours (intentions) as truth-apt and sometimes true, and truth in those areas as judgement-dependent. In contrast to this, Wright argues (1988) that morals cannot plausibly be viewed as judgement-dependent, so that a thesis of judgement-dependence is not a suitable vehicle for the expression of a non-expressivistic, non-error-theoretic, version of anti-realism about morality.

For discussion of further allegedly realism-relevant cruces, such as cognitive command, see Wright 1992 and 2003. For critical discussion of Wright on cognitive command, see Shapiro and Taschek 1996. See also Miller 2004.It is the availability of these various realism-relevant cruces that makes it possible to be more-or-less realist about a given area: at one end of the spectrum there will be areas that fall on the realist side of all of the cruces and at the opposite end areas that fall on the non-realist side of all of the cruces, but in between there will be a range of intermediate cases in which some-but-not-all of the cruces are satisfied on the realist side.

Some of the ways in which non-realist theses about a particular subject matter can be formulated and motivated have been described above. Quietism is the view that significant metaphysical debate between realism and non-realism is impossible. Gideon Rosen nicely articulates the basic quietist thought:

We sense that there is a heady metaphysical thesis at stake in these debates over realism—a question on a par with the issues Kant first raised about the status of nature. But after a point, when every attempt to say just what the issue is has come up empty, we have no real choice but to conclude that despite all the wonderful, suggestive imagery, there is ultimately nothing in the neighborhood to discuss (1994: 279).

Quietism about the ‘debate’ between realists and their opponents can take a number of forms. One form might claim that the idea of a significant debate is generated by unsupported or unsupportable philosophical theses about the relationship of the experiencing and minded subject to their world, and that once these theses are exorcised the ‘debate’ will gradually wither away. This form of quietism is often associated with the work of the later Wittgenstein, and receives perhaps its most forceful development in the work of John McDowell (see in particular McDowell 1994). Other forms of quietism may proceed in a more piecemeal fashion, taking constraints such as Wright's realism-relevant Cruces and arguing on a case-by-case basis that their satisfaction or non-satisfaction is of no metaphysical consequence. This is in fact the strategy pursued in Rosen 1994. He makes the following points regarding the two realism-relevant Cruces considered in the previous section.

Suppose that:

(F) It is a priori that: x is funny if and only if we would judge x funny under conditions of full information about x s relevant extra-comedic features

and suppose that (F) satisfies (in addition to a prioricity) the various other constraints that Wright imposes on his provisional equations ((F) is actually not of the form of a provisional equation, but this is not relevant to our purposes here). Rosen questions whether this would be enough to establish that the facts about the funny are in some metaphysically interesting sense ‘less real’ or ‘less objective’ than facts (such as, arguably, facts about shape) for which a suitable equation cannot be constructed.

In a nutshell, Rosen's argument proceeds by inviting us to assume the perspective of an anthropologist who is studying us and who ‘has gotten to the point where he can reliably determine which jokes we will judge funny under conditions of full relevant information’ (1994: 302). Rosen writes:

[T]he important point is that from [the anthropologist's] point of view, the facts about the distribution of [the property denoted by our use of ‘funny’] are ‘mind-dependent’ only in the sense that they supervene directly on facts about our minds. But again, this has no tendency to undermine their objectivity … [since] we have been given no reason to think that the facts about what a certain group of people would think after a certain sort of investigation are anything but robustly objective (1994: composed from 300 and 302).

How plausible is this attempt to deflate the significance of the discovery that the subject matter of a particular area is, in Wright's sense, judgement-dependent? Argument—as opposed to the trading of intuitions—at this level is difficult, but Rosen's claim here is very implausible. Suppose we found out that facts about the distribution of gases on the moons of Jupiter supervened directly on facts about our minds. Would the threat we then felt to the objectivity of facts about the distribution of gases on the moons of Jupiter be at all assuaged by the reflection that facts about the mental might themselves be susceptible to realistic treatment? It seems doubtful. Fodor's Psychosemantics would not offer much solace to realists in the world described in Berkeley's Principles. Rosen's claim derives some of its plausibility from the fact that he uses examples, such as the funny and the constitutional, where our pre-theoretical attachment to a realist view is very weak: it may be that the judgement-dependence of the funny doesn't undermine our sense of the objectivity of humour simply because the level of objectivity we pretheoretically expect of comedy is quite low. So although there is no knock-down argument to Rosen's claim, it is much more counterintuitive than he would be willing to admit.

Rosen also questions whether there is any intuitive connection between considerations of width of cosmological role and issues of realism and non-realism. Rosen doubts in particular that there is any tight connection between facts of a certain class having only narrow cosmological role and mind-dependence in any sense relevant to the plausibility of realism. He writes:

It is possible to imagine a subtle physical property Q which, though intuitively thoroughly objective, is nonetheless nomically connected in the first instance only with brain state B —where this happens to be the belief that things are Q . This peculiar discovery would not undermine our confidence that Q was an objective feature of things, as it should if [a feature of objects is less than fully objective if it has narrow cosmological role] (1994: 312).

However it seems that, at least in the first instance, Wright has a relatively quick response to this point at his disposal. Waiving the point that in any case the width of cosmological role constraint applies to classes of properties and facts, he can point out that in the example constructed by Rosen the narrowness of Q's cosmological role is an a posteriori matter. Whereas what we want is that the narrowness of cosmological role is an a priori matter: one does not need to conduct an empirical investigation to convince oneself that facts about the funny fail to have wide cosmological role.

Wright thus has the beginnings of answers to Rosen's quietist attack on his use of the notions of judgement-dependence and width of cosmological role. It is not possible to deal fully with these arguments here, let alone with the other quietist arguments in Rosen's paper, or the arguments of other quietists such as McDowell, beyond giving a flavour of how quietism might be motivated and how those active in the debates between realists and their opponents might start to respond. For a further discussion of quietism by Wright, see Wright 2007.

This discussion of realism and of the forms that non-realist opposition may take is far from exhaustive, and aims only to give the reader a sense of what to expect if they delve deeper into the issues. In particular, nothing has been mentioned about the work of Hilary Putnam, his characterisation of ‘metaphysical realism’, and his so-called ‘model-theoretic’ argument against it. Putnam's writings are extensive, but one could begin with Putnam 1981 and 1983. For critical discussion, see Hale and Wright 1997 and Wright 2001; see also the entries on scientific realism and challenges to metaphysical realism . Nor have issues about the metaphysics of modality and possible worlds been discussed. The locus classicus in this area is Lewis 1986. For commentary, see Divers 2002 and Melia 2003; see also the entries on David Lewis's metaphysics and the epistemology of modality . And the very important topic of scientific realism has not been touched upon. For an introductory treatment and suggestions for further reading, see Bird 1998 Ch. 4; see also, the entries on scientific realism and structural realism . Finally, it has not been possible to include any discussion of realism about intentionality and meaning (but see the entries on intentionality and theories of meaning .) The locus classicus in recent philosophy is Kripke 1982. For a robustly realistic view of the intentional, see Fodor 1987. For a collection of some of the central secondary literature, see Miller and Wright 2002, and for a robust defence of Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein, see Kusch (2006). For an entertaining defence of metaphysical realism, see Musgrave 2001 (exercise for the reader: do any of the forms of opposition to realism described in this entry rely on what Musgrave calls word-magic?). For an alternative approach to mapping the debates about realism, see Fine (2001). For good introductory book length treatments of realism, see Kirk 1999 and Brock and Mares 2006. Greenough and Lynch (2006) is a useful collection of papers by many of the leading lights in the various debates about realism.

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• Musgrave, A., 2001. ‘Metaphysical Realism Versus Word-Magic’, Realismus Disziplin Interdisziplinaritat , Amsterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi, 29–54.
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Realism: An Essay in Definition

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George J. Becker; Realism: An Essay in Definition. Modern Language Quarterly 1 June 1949; 10 (2): 184–197. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-10-2-184

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Essay on realism.

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Read this essay to learn about Realism. After reading this Essay you will learn about: 1. Introduction to Realism 2. Fundamental Philosophical Ideas of Realism 3. Forms 4. Realism in Education 5. Curriculum 6. Evaluation

• Essay on the Evaluation

Essay # 1. Introduction to Realism:

Emerged as a strong movement against extreme idealistic view of the world around.

Realism changed the contour of education in a systematic way. It viewed external world as a real world; not a world of fantasy.

It is not based upon perception of the individuals but is an objective reality based on reason and science.

The Realist trend in philosophical spectrum can be traced back to Aristotle who was interested in particular facts of life as against Plato who was interested in abstractions and generalities. Therefore, Aristotle is rightly called as the father of Realism. Saint Thomas Aquinas and Comenius infused realistic spirit in religion.

John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Freiderich Herbart and William James affirmed that external world is a real world. In the 20th century, two sections of realist surfaced the area of philosophy. Six American professors led by Barton Perry and Montague are neo-realists. Another section spearheaded by Arthur Lovejoy, Johns Hopkins and George Santayana emerged are called as critical realists.

Essay # 2. Fundamental Philosophical Ideas of Realism :

(i) phenomenal world is true:.

Realists believe in the external world which is true as against the idealist world-a world d this life. It is a world of objects and not ideas. It is a pluralistic world. Ross has commented, “Realism simply affirms the existence of an external world and is therefore the antithesis of subjective idealism.”

There is an order and design of the external world in which man is a part and the world idealism by the laws of cause and effect relationships. As such there is no freedom of the will for man.

(ii) Opposes to Idealist Values :

In realism, there is no berth for imagination and speculation. Entities of God, soul and other world are nothing; they are mere figments of human imagination. Only objective world is real world which a man can know with the help of his mind. Realism does not believe in ideal values, would discover values in his immediate social life. The external world would provide the work for the discovery and realization of values.

(iii) Theory of Organism :

Realists believe that an organism is formed by conscious and unconscious things. Mind is regarded as the function of organism. Whitehead, a Neo-realist remarks “ The universe is a vibrating organism in the process of evolution. Change is the fundamental feature of this vibrating universe. The very essence of real actuality is process. Mind must be regarded as the function of the organism.”

(iv) Theory of Knowledge :

According to realists, the world around us is a reality; the real knowledge is the knowledge of the surrounding world. Senses are the gateways of knowledge of the external world. The impressions and sensations as a result of our communication with external world through our sense organs result in knowledge which is real.

The best method to acquire the knowledge of the external world is the experiment or the scientific method. One has to define the problem, observe all the facts and phenomena pertaining to the problem, formulate a hypothesis, test and verify it and accept the verified solution. Alfred North, Whitehead, and Bertrand Russel have stressed on the use of this scientific method.

(v) Stress on Present Applied Life :

According to realists, spiritual world is not real and cannot be realized. They believed in the present world-physical or material which can be realized. Man is a part and parcel of this material world. They put premium upon the molding and directing of human behaviour as conditioned by the physical and material facts of the present life, for this can promote happiness and welfare.

Therefore, metaphysics according to realism is that the external world is a reality-it is a world of objects and not ideas. Epistemology deals with the knowledge-knowledge of this external world through the senses and scientific method and enquiry. Axiology in it is that realists reject idealistic values, favour discovering values in the immediate social life.

Essay # 3. Forms of Realism :

There are four forms of realism, viz., humanistic realism, social realism, sense realism and neo-realism.

(i) Humanistic Realism :

The advocates of this form of realism are Irasmus, Rebelias and Milton. The supporters of the realism firmly believed that education should be realistic which can promote human welfare and success. They favoured the study of Greek & Roman literature for individual, social and spiritual development.

Irasmus (1446-1536) castigated narrow educational system and in its place. favoured broad and liberal education. Rebelias (1483-1553) also advocated liberal education, opposed theoretical knowledge and said that education should be such as to prepare the individual to face all the problems of life with courage and solve them successfully.

He suggested scientific and psychological methods and techniques. Milton (1608-1674) also stressed liberal and complete education. He, in this connection, writes, “I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and public of peace and war.”

He opposed mere academic education and insisted that education should give knowledge of things and objects. He prescribed language, literature and moral education is main subjects of study; and physiology, agriculture and sculpture as subsidiary subjects of study for children.

(ii) Social Realism :

Social realists opposed academic and bookish knowledge and advocated that education should promote working efficiency of men and women in the society. Education aims at making human life happier and successful. They suggested that curriculum should include History, Geography. Law, Diplomacy, Warfare, Arithmetic’s, Dancing, Gymnastics etc. for the development of social qualities.

Further, with a view to making education practical and useful, the realists stressed upon Travelling, Tour, observation and direct experience. Lord Montaigne (1533-1552) condemned cramming and favored learning by experience through tours and travels. He opposed knowledge for the sake of knowledge and strongly advocated practical and useful knowledge.

John Locke (1635-1704) advocated education through the mother tongue and lively method of teaching which stimulates motivation and interest in the children. As an individualist, he believed that the mind of a child is a clean slate on which only experiences write. He prescribed those subjects which are individually and socially useful in the curriculum.

(iii) Sense Realism :

Developed in the Seventeenth century sense realism upholds the truth that real knowledge comes through our senses. Further, sense realists believed all forms of knowledge spring from the external world. They viewed that education should provide plethora of opportunities to the children to observe and study natural phenomena and come in contact with external objects through the senses.

Therefore, true knowledge is gained by the child about natural objects, natural phenomena and laws through the exercises of senses. They favoured observation, scientific subjects, inductive method and useful education. Mulcaster (1530—1611) advocated physical and mental development aims of education.

Reacted against any forced impressions upon the mind of the child, he upheld use of psychological methods of teaching for the promotion of mental faculties-intelligence, memory and judgement.

Francis Bacon (1562-1623) writes, “The object of all knowledge is to give man power over nature.” He, thus, advocated inductive method of teaching-the child is free to observe and experiment by means of his senses and limbs. He emphasised science and observation of nature as the real methods to gain knowledge.

Ratke (1571-1625) said that senses are the gateways of knowledge and advocated the following maxims:

a. One thing at a time,

b. Follow nature,

c. Repetition,

d. Importance on mother-tongue,

e. No rote learning,

f. Sensory knowledge,

g. Knowledge through experience and uniformity of all things.

Comenius (1592-1671) advocated universal education and natural method of education. He said that knowledge comes not only through the senses but through man’s intelligence and divine inspiration. He favoured continuous teaching till learning is achieved and advocated mother-tongue to precede other subjects.

(iv) Neo-Realism :

The positive contribution of neo-realism is its acceptance of the methods and results of modern development in physics. It believes that rules and procedures of science are changeable from time to time according to the conditions of prevailing circumstances.

Whitehead said that an organism is formed by the consciousness and the unconsciousness, the moveable and immovable thing. Education should give to child full-scale knowledge of an organism. Man should understand all values very clearly for getting full knowledge about organism. Bertrand Russell emphasized sensory development of the child.

He favoured analytical method and classification. He assigned no place to religion and supported physics to be included as one of the foremost subjects of study. Further, he opposed emotional strain in children as it leads to development of fatigue.

Essay # 4. Realism in Education :

Realism asserts that education is a preparation for life, for education equips the child by providing adequate training to face the crude realities of life with courage as he or she would perform various roles such as a citizen, a worker, a husband, a housewife, a member of the group, etc. As such, education concerns with problems of life of the child.

Chief Characteristics of Education :

The following are the chief characteristics of realistic education:

(i) Based on Science:

Realism emphasized scientific education. It favored the inclusion of scientific subjects in he curriculum and of natural education. Natural education is based on science which is real.

(ii) Thrust upon present Life of the Child :

The focal point of realistic education is the present life of the child. As it focuses upon the real and practical problems of the life, it aims at welfare and happiness of the child.

(iii) Emphasis on Experiment and Applied life :

It emphasizes experiments, experience and practical knowledge. Realistic education supports learning by doing and practical work for enabling the child to solve his or her immediate practical problems for leading a happy and successful life.

(iv) Opposes to Bookish Knowledge :

Realistic education strongly condemned all bookish knowledge, for it does not help the child to face the realities of life adequately. It does not enable the child to decipher the realities of external things and natural phenomena. The motto of realistic education is ”Not Words but Things.”

(v) Freedom of Child:

According to realists, child should be given full freedom to develop his self according to his innate tendencies. Further, they view that such freedom should promote self-discipline and self-control the foundation of self development.

(vi) Emphasis on Training of Senses:

Unlike idealists who impose knowledge from above, realists advocated self-learning through senses which need to be trained. Since, senses are the doors of knowledge, these needs to be adequately nurtured and trained.

(vii) Balance between Individuality and Sociability :

Realists give importance to individuality and sociability of the child equally. Bacon lucidly states that realistic education develops the individual on the one hand and tries to develop social trails on the other through the development of social consciousness and sense of service of the individual.

Aims of Education :

The following aims of education are articulated by the realists:

(i) Preparation for the Good life:

The chief aim of realistic education is to prepare the child to lead a happy and good life. Education enables the child to solve his problems of life adequately and successfully. Leading ‘good life’ takes four important things-self-preservation, self-determination, self-realization and self-integration.

(ii) Preparation for a Real Life of the Material World:

Realists believe that the external material world is the real world which one must know through the senses. The aim of education is to prepare a child for real life of material world.

(iii) Development of Physical and Mental Powers:

According to realists, another important aim of education is to enable the child to solve different life problems by using the faculty of mind: intelligence, discrimination and judgement.

(iv) Development of Senses:

Realists thought that development of senses is the sine-qua-non for realization of the material world. Therefore, the aim of education is to help the development of senses fully by providing varied experiences.

(v) Acquainting with External Nature and Social Environment:

It is an another aim of realistic education to help the child to know the nature and social environment for leading a successful life.

(vi) Imparting Vocational Knowledge and Skill :

According to realists, another important aim of education is to provide vocational knowledge, information, skill etc., to make the child vocationally efficient for meeting the problems of livelihood.

(vii) Development of Character :

Realistic education aims at development of character for leading a successful and balanced life.

(viii) Enabling the Child to Adjust with the Environment :

According to realists, education should aim at enabling the child to adapt adequately to the surroundings.

Essay # 5. Curriculum of Realism :

Realists wanted to include those subjects and activities which would prepare the children for actual day to day living. As such, they thought it proper to give primary place to nature, science and vocational subjects whereas secondary place to Arts, literature, biography, philosophy, psychology and morality.

Besides, they have laid stress upon teaching of mother- tongue as the foundation of all development. It is necessary for reading, writing and social interaction but not for literary purposes.

(i) Methods of Teaching :

Realists favoured principles of observation and experience as imparting knowledge of objects and external world can be given properly through the technique of observation and experience. Further, they encouraged use of audio-visual aids in education as they would develop sensory powers in the children.

Children would have “feel” of reality through them. Realists also encouraged the use of lectures, discussions and symposia. Socratic and inductive methods were also advocated. Memorization at early stage was also recommended.

Besides, learning by travelling was also suggested. The maxims of teaching are to proceed from easy to difficult, simple to complex, known to unknown, definite to indefinite, concrete to abstract and particular to general. In addition, realists give importance on the principle of correlation as they consider all knowledge as one unit.

(ii) Discipline :

Realists decry expressionistic discipline and advocate self-discipline to make good adjustment in the external environment. They, further, assert that virtues can be inculcated for withstanding realities of physical world. Children need to be disciplined to become a part of the world around in and to understand reality.

(iii) Teacher :

Under the realistic school, the teacher must be a scholar and his duty is to guide the children towards the hard core realities of life. He must expose them to the problems of life and the world around. The teacher should have full knowledge of the content and needs of the children.

He should present the content in a lucid and intelligible way by employing scientific and psychological methods is also the duty of the teacher to tell children about scientific discoveries, researches and inventions id he should inspire them to undertake close observation and experimentation for finding out new facts and principles.

Moreover, he himself should engage in research activities. Teachers, in order to be good and effective, should get training before making a foray into the field of teaching profession.

(iv) School :

Some realists’ view that school is essential as it looks like a mirror of society reflecting its real picture of state of affairs. It is the school which provides for the fullest development of the child in accordance with his needs and aspirations and it prepares the child for livelihood. According to Comenius, “The school should be like the lap of mother full of affection, love and sympathy. Schools are true foregoing places of men.”

Essay # 6. Evaluation of Realism :

Proper evaluation of realism can be made possible by throwing a light on its merits and demerits.

(i) Realism is a practical philosophy preaching one to come to term with reality. Education which is non-realistic cannot be useful to the humanity. Now, useless education has come to be considered as waste of time, energy and resources.

(ii) Scientific subjects have come to stay in our present curriculum due to the impact of realistic education.

(iii) In the domain of methods of teaching the impact of realistic education is ostensible. In modern education, inductive, heuristic, objective, experimentation and correlation methods have been fully acknowledged all over the globe.

(iv) In the area of discipline, realism is worth its name as it favours impressionistic and self-discipline which have been given emphasis in modern educational theory and practice in a number of countries in the globe.

(v) Realistic philosophy has changed the organisational climate of schools. Now, schools have been the centres of joyful activities, practical engagements and interesting experiments. Modern school is a vibrant school.

(i) Realism puts emphasis on facts and realities of life. It neglects ideals and values of life. Critics argue that denial of ideals and values often foments helplessness and pessimism which mar the growth and development of the individuals. This is really lop-sided philosophy.

(ii) Realism emphasizes scientific subjects at the cost of arts and literature. This affair also creates a state of imbalance in the curriculum. It hijacks ‘humanities’ as critics’ label.

(iii) Realism regards senses as the gateways of knowledge. But the question comes to us, how does illusion occur and how do we get faulty knowledge? It does not provide satisfactory answer.

(iv) Realism accepts the real needs and feelings of individual. It does not believe in imagination, emotion and sentiment which are parts and parcel of individual life.

(v) Although realism stresses upon physical world, it fails to provide answers to the following questions pertaining to physical world.

(i) Is the physical world absolute ?

(ii) Is there any limits of physical world ?

(iii) Is the physical world supreme or powerful?

(vi) Realism is often criticized for its undue emphasis on knowledge and it neglects the child. As the modern trend in education is paedocentric, realism is said to have put the clock behind the times by placing its supreme priority on knowledge.

In-spite of the criticisms, realism as a real philosophy stands to the tune of time and it permeates all aspects of education. It is recognized as one of the best philosophies which need to be browsed cautiously. It has its influence in modern educational theory and practice.

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Guest Essay

The Long-Overlooked Molecule That Will Define a Generation of Science

By Thomas Cech

Dr. Cech is a biochemist and the author of the forthcoming book “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted.

From E=mc² to splitting the atom to the invention of the transistor, the first half of the 20th century was dominated by breakthroughs in physics.

Then, in the early 1950s, biology began to nudge physics out of the scientific spotlight — and when I say “biology,” what I really mean is DNA. The momentous discovery of the DNA double helix in 1953 more or less ushered in a new era in science that culminated in the Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, which decoded all of our DNA into a biological blueprint of humankind.

DNA has received an immense amount of attention. And while the double helix was certainly groundbreaking in its time, the current generation of scientific history will be defined by a different (and, until recently, lesser-known) molecule — one that I believe will play an even bigger role in furthering our understanding of human life: RNA.

You may remember learning about RNA (ribonucleic acid) back in your high school biology class as the messenger that carries information stored in DNA to instruct the formation of proteins. Such messenger RNA, mRNA for short, recently entered the mainstream conversation thanks to the role they played in the Covid-19 vaccines. But RNA is much more than a messenger, as critical as that function may be.

Other types of RNA, called “noncoding” RNAs, are a tiny biological powerhouse that can help to treat and cure deadly diseases, unlock the potential of the human genome and solve one of the most enduring mysteries of science: explaining the origins of all life on our planet.

Though it is a linchpin of every living thing on Earth, RNA was misunderstood and underappreciated for decades — often dismissed as nothing more than a biochemical backup singer, slaving away in obscurity in the shadows of the diva, DNA. I know that firsthand: I was slaving away in obscurity on its behalf.

In the early 1980s, when I was much younger and most of the promise of RNA was still unimagined, I set up my lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After two years of false leads and frustration, my research group discovered that the RNA we’d been studying had catalytic power. This means that the RNA could cut and join biochemical bonds all by itself — the sort of activity that had been thought to be the sole purview of protein enzymes. This gave us a tantalizing glimpse at our deepest origins: If RNA could both hold information and orchestrate the assembly of molecules, it was very likely that the first living things to spring out of the primordial ooze were RNA-based organisms.

That breakthrough at my lab — along with independent observations of RNA catalysis by Sidney Altman at Yale — was recognized with a Nobel Prize in 1989. The attention generated by the prize helped lead to an efflorescence of research that continued to expand our idea of what RNA could do.

In recent years, our understanding of RNA has begun to advance even more rapidly. Since 2000, RNA-related breakthroughs have led to 11 Nobel Prizes. In the same period, the number of scientific journal articles and patents generated annually by RNA research has quadrupled. There are more than 400 RNA-based drugs in development, beyond the ones that are already in use. And in 2022 alone, more than $1 billion in private equity funds was invested in biotechnology start-ups to explore frontiers in RNA research.

What’s driving the RNA age is this molecule’s dazzling versatility. Yes, RNA can store genetic information, just like DNA. As a case in point, many of the viruses (from influenza to Ebola to SARS-CoV-2) that plague us don’t bother with DNA at all; their genes are made of RNA, which suits them perfectly well. But storing information is only the first chapter in RNA’s playbook.

Unlike DNA, RNA plays numerous active roles in living cells. It acts as an enzyme, splicing and dicing other RNA molecules or assembling proteins — the stuff of which all life is built — from amino acid building blocks. It keeps stem cells active and forestalls aging by building out the DNA at the ends of our chromosomes.

RNA discoveries have led to new therapies, such as the use of antisense RNA to help treat children afflicted with the devastating disease spinal muscular atrophy. The mRNA vaccines, which saved millions of lives during the Covid pandemic, are being reformulated to attack other diseases, including some cancers . RNA research may also be helping us rewrite the future; the genetic scissors that give CRISPR its breathtaking power to edit genes are guided to their sites of action by RNAs.

Although most scientists now agree on RNA's bright promise, we are still only beginning to unlock its potential. Consider, for instance, that some 75 percent of the human genome consists of dark matter that is copied into RNAs of unknown function. While some researchers have dismissed this dark matter as junk or noise, I expect it will be the source of even more exciting breakthroughs.

We don’t know yet how many of these possibilities will prove true. But if the past 40 years of research have taught me anything, it is never to underestimate this little molecule. The age of RNA is just getting started.

Thomas Cech is a biochemist at the University of Colorado, Boulder; a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989 for his work with RNA; and the author of “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted.

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