'The Massive Presence of the Past and the Outside'

Abstract

ritical realism was first developed in a particular context, both epistemological and historical. Roy Bhaskar intervened in the philosophical critiques of positivism which had reached an ‘impasse’. Against positivism, existing critiques had emphasized the socially constructed nature of scientific knowledge, but failed to challenge positivism’s theory of reality—its ontology; which Bhaskar went on to do. As Bhaskar observes, the demise of positivism coincided historically ‘with the end of the post-war boom, more than a whiff of revolt and even revolution [...] Relativity theory, quantum mechanics, the liberation of the colonies, the threat of a nuclear holocaust and looming ecological crisis rendered conventional assumptions obsolete. The time was ripe for ontology’ and for Bhaskar’s theory of transcendental realism and critical naturalism. Then, ‘the seventies made way for the eighties and the events of 1989, for a new account of change, especially in the context of the collapse of communism, the poverty of most materialist dialectical philosophy and the monstrous inequities of the strife-torn, crisis-ridden chaotic new world order that Bush, Benetton and Hayek were in the process of ushering in. It is in this milieu that dialectical critical realism came into being.’