Western Philosophical Tradition Research Articles

Thought Experiments and Personal Identity in Africa

AbstractAfrican perspectives on personhood and personal identity and their relation to those of the West have become far more central in mainstream Western discussion than they once were. Not only are African traditional views with their emphasis on the importance of community and social relations more widely discussed, but that emphasis has also received much wider acceptance and gained more influence among Western philosophers. Despite this convergence, there is at least one striking way in which the discussions remain apart and that is on a point of method. The Western discussion makes widespread use of thought experiments. In the African discussion, they are almost entirely absent. In this article, we put forward a possible explanation for the method of thought experiment being avoided that is based on considerations stemming from John Mbiti's account of the traditional African view of time. These considerations find an echo in criticism offered of the method in the Western debate. We consider whether a response to both trains of thought can be found that can further bring the Western and African philosophical traditions into fruitful dialogue.

LISTENING: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY PATH TOWARDS LETTING THINGS BE

The Western philosophical and scientific tradition was and still is based on rationalism, objectivity, truths that are all sought from the ocularcentric paradigm. Many thinkers, however, have been recognising this perspective to be exclusive towards the other senses, and therefore insufficient. Listening, as enabled by the auditory sense, has a potential for revealing a deeper sense of being in the world. In this article listening is presented as a possible way towards inhabiting our life-world and nonetheless “to let things be.” In order to do so, an interdisciplinary approach of research is adopted. First, the author offers some perspectives from the field of the ethics of listening, where the thoughts of Lisbeth Lipari, Luce Irigaray and others expose listening as an intersubjective gesture of encounter with the other in acceptance. Through his philosophy of listening, Jean-Luc Nancy, one of the crucial voices in this study, offers an explication of how listening can be the force of liberating sense and senses. Further on, an account on auditory phenomenology is offered, combining it with and stressing the importance of Husserl’s understanding of intersubjectivity. These perspectives are then enriched with echoes from acoustic ecology and its experiences of listening to the environment. The reverberations of multiple voices presented in this text allow for an understanding of listening as an intersubjective and mutually constitutive activity. As such, it involves a liberation of sense and allows for an openness to being and beings.

The concept of «liberties» in the Ukrainian legal tradition and legal documents of the XV – early XX centuries

The article is devoted to the consideration of the legal aspect of the concept of «liberties» in the historical and legal reality of the XV – early XX centuries. Researchers’ interpretations of the meaning of the concept of «liberties» of the Middle Ages and the Cossack-Hetman era are considered. An attempt has been made to consider the notion of «liberties» in relation to the notion of «rights» and the legal tradition of the time. It is noted that by the eighteenth century. the actual meaning of the concept of «liberties» was the legal status of a person, group of persons, full status, as well as the legal regime of the territory. The concept of «liberties» for five hundred years reflected the dynamics of social values by enshrining them in legal documents and the rule of law. This concept has evolved in accordance with the transformations of legal reality and legal life of society, the genesis of legal understanding, the development of legal terminology and the conceptual apparatus. The course of the struggle of the Ukrainian population for their rights and freedoms led to the dominance of the problem of rights and freedoms in the legal consciousness and in the legal life of the then Ukrainian society. The meaning of the concept of «liberties» was formed as a result of a combination in the minds of the people of the Western philosophical tradition, religious, spiritual and legal values and ideology of the then Ukrainian politicum. For a long period from XV to XVIII centuries. in fact, the meaning of the concept of «liberties» was the legal status (scope of rights and freedoms) of a person, group of persons, estates, as well as the legal regime of the territory. In the early twentieth century. the concept of «liberties» was included in the texts of the constitutional acts of the UPR. This is explained, in our opinion, by two reasons: the authors’ attempt to emphasize the longevity and continuity of the national legal tradition and the imperfection of the terminology and the then conceptual apparatus of legal science. However, other variants of the meaning of the concept of «liberties» are not excluded, in particular, in the understanding of the political rights of a particular community. This question requires further, deeper research. Keywords: liberties, law, freedom, Ukrainian legal tradition, legal status of the Ukrainian population, legal regime of the territory of residence of the Ukrainian population, legal values

The Somatic Turn in the Aesthetics and Its Significance——A Cross-cultural Perspective

The entire history of Western philosophy and aesthetics is a history of struggle between the body and the soul. For a long time, the traditional western philosophy represented by Plato and Augustine insisted on a ideological path of separating the body and mind and restraining the body and raising the mind. In contemporary academic discourse, the sudden emergence of "body" is directly related to the modern trend of thought, and in fact constitutes a reflection and correction of traditional ideological aesthetics. Thinkers such as Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault initiated this thought process, while Richard Shusterman established its basic orientation from the perspective of discipline construction. In response to this, Chinese scholars have also made more obvious theoretical contributions. As a paradigm of Somaesthetic, it sharply criticizes Logocentrism, insists on cultural comparison, highlights the practical function of theory, and implements the life care of aesthetics, which provides a meaningful value scale for the construction of contemporary aesthetics.

«I Will Eat You and Spit You Out»: A Reading of the ‘Lesbian Machine’ in Dacia Maraini’s Lettere a Marina

This article analyzes the «lesbian-machines» (Grosz 1995, 184) at work in Dacia Maraini’s novel Lettere a Marina (1981) and collection of poems Mangiami pure (1978). To this purpose, I engage with two conceptions of desire within the western philosophical tradition. Firstly, examining the development of the metaphor of cannibalism or ‘eros fagico’, I argue that Maraini avoids the ontologization of the notion of desire considered as a lack and thus disengages it from its historical association with the denigration of the female other. Secondly, conceiving desire as a force of production, relational and creative, I explore a particular use of metaphors in the novel which leads to bodily transformations or metamorphosis, without, however, reaching the subject’s imperceptibility through progressive identification. The co-presence and re-elaboration of two, apparently incompatible, theories of desire underline female same-sex desire’s potential to be thought and actualized as a lack and a production, its tendency to annihilate and being annihilated as well as its creative impulses. As a result, Dacia Maraini’s Lettere a Marina and Mangiami pure complicate and destabilize the fixity of representational categories, expanding discourses on lesbianism and lesbian desire. Indeed, the convolution of negative and positive dilates the domain of desire and multiplies its possibilities, carving out a «narrative space in which women might desire differently» (Ross 2015, 16), beyond the heterosexual norm and in diverse ways, who and how they please.

Razón poética, revelación y saber

It is intended to give an approach to the religious thought of María Zambrano. To achieve the objective, the methodology consisted of a bibliographic review of the works of the thinker and some of her main scholars. As a result, initially a general approach to the phenomenon of religious language is developed, to frame the way in which the author used said language. A biographical sketch of the thinker is also exposed to reveal his formative sources, his intellectual occupations and his linguistic options. It is proposed that both sections be conceived as meaningful contexts to address your thinking. In addition, in a transversal way, she realizes the criticism that Zambrano makes of the western philosophical tradition. Specifically, regarding her theological thinking, the concepts of poetry, philosophy and “poetic reason” are exposed in greater detail, the latter conceived as the notion with which the author proposes to synthesize poetry and reason, and to which she attributes - meanwhile Poetic Knowledge: the ability to reveal the true being of things and the genuine meaning of human existence

Presocratics and Other Living Beings

Advocates of the questioning of the dominant anthropocentric perspective of the world have been increasingly strongly presenting (bio)ethical demands for a new solution of the relationship between humans and other beings, saying that adherence to the Western philosophical and theological traditions has caused the current environmental, and not just environmental, crisis. The attempts are being made to establish a new relationship by relativizing the differences between man and the non-human living beings, often by attributing specifically human traits and categories, such as dignity, moral status and rights to non-human living beings. The author explores antecedents of the standpoints that deviate from the mainstream Western philosophy, in terms of non-anthropocentric extension of ethics, and finds them in the fragments of first physicists, which emphasize kinship of all varieties of life. Pythagoras, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Democritus, in this context, considered certain animals and plants as sacred, i.e. they believed that they are, in a sense, responsible for what they do and that they apart from being able to be driven by a natural desire, being able to breathe, feel, be sad and happy, also have a soul, power of discernment, awareness, the ability to think, understanding and mind. Finally, the author believes that solutions or mitigation of the mentioned crisis are not in the simple Aesopeian levelling of animals and plants "upwards", but in an adequate paideutic approach which in humans will develop an inherent (bio)ethical model of accepting non-human living beings as creatures who deserve moral and decent treatment and respect.

Специфика философского подхода к пониманию конфликта: история и современность

Представления об амбивалентности конфликта, его противоречивом характере играли особую роль в западной философской традиции с момента ее возникновения. В современном контексте новое концептуальное понимание конфликта разрабатывается в рамках философии диалога.

Witold Gombrowicz and Philosophy

The author of the article examines Witold Gombrowicz’s literary texts, diaries, lectures, essays, interviews and letters, as well as memoirs about him, trying to reconstruct the most important philosophical issues that concerned the writer and to describe the nature of his philosophizing. Gombrowicz’s philosophyzing is placed in the very broad context of the Western philosophical thinking tradition. Subsequently, that context is narrowed down to Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism which was closest to Gombrowicz and from which he specified his own position by strictly limiting Sartre’s concept of activistic freedom and self-creation and introducing the issue of pain and suffering.Gombrowicz fundamentally modified Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological conception of the transcendental ego, paradoxically identifying it with his own self. The author of the article also draws attention to the philosophy of life, mentioned neither by Gombrowicz nor the authors who researched his philosophy, which is important for understanding the foundations of writer’s thinking. He also analyzes the relationship between philosophical and literary thinking, the personality or even privacy of philosophizing, the “implementation” of philosophical thinking, and other issues.

Synthesis of Cultures of the East and West in the Philosophy of B.D. Dandaron

The article deals with the phenomenon of synthesis of East and West cultures in the religious philosophy of B.D. Dandaron - one of the most famous representatives of Russian Buddhism in the XX century. The beginning of the spread of Buddhist teachings in Russian society is also connected with his extraordinary personality. Dandaron was engaged in active yoga, tantric practice, and also gave instructions to those who were interested in Buddhism. As a result, a small circle of people began to form around him who tried to study and practice Buddhism. Dandaron was also engaged in Buddhist activities, studied Tibetan history and historiography, and described the Tibetan collection of manuscripts. It is indicated that Dandaron not only made an attempt to consider Buddhism from the perspective of Western philosophy, but also created his own teaching, which was called neobuddism. As a result, he was able to conduct a creative synthesis of Buddhist philosophy with the Western philosophical tradition. In fact, he developed a philosophical system that claims to be universal and synthesized Buddhist and Western spiritual achievements. Trying to synthesize the Eastern and Western traditions of philosophical thought, Dandaron turned to the well-known comparative works of the Indian thinker S. Radhakrishnan and the Russian buddhologist F.I. Shcherbatsky. The author also notes the influence on the philosophy of neobuddism of the ideas of V.E. Sesemann, a neo-Kantian philosopher with whom Dandaron was personally acquainted. The idea of non-Buddhism had not only a philosophical and theoretical, but also a practical aspect, since the consideration of Buddhism from the perspective of Western philosophy helped to attract people of Western culture to this religion. In General, Dandarons desire to create a universal synthetic philosophical system was in line with the philosophical and spiritual search of Russian philosophy, and was partly related to the traditional problem of East-West, which has always been relevant for Russia.

N.A. Berdyaev and M. Scheler: Philosophical and Anthropological Approaches to the Problem of Theodicy

The article considers the approaches to theodicy’s problem of Russian and German philosophers with clear religious orientation: Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev and Max Scheler. However, for more explicit insight into our topic we found, the article provides the general overview of theodicy tradition (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz). Standpoints of these thinkers living in different epochs are linked by the steady belief in a reasonability of the world created by God. The main obstacle to acceptance of this argumentation is the problem of evil’s existence. The way of thinking that has the goal to demonstrate the world’s perfectness presumes either necessity of evil as a mean (for good’s revealing) or the evil’s insignificance or even its illusiveness, which is the result of “too human” perspective. Such ways of thought have become impossible since the second half of 19th century, when the concrete person’s experience (not a separated from it thought) had been recognized as a main source of philosophy. In Russian culture, this attitude became widespread after F.M. Dostoevsky, in German culture – after F. Nietzsche. Berdyaev and Scheler inherit the impulse of their thought. Distinctive feature of religious philosophies of Berdyaev and Scheler (compared to early Christian and Western philosophical and theological traditions) is conceptualization of the assertion of God’s need in human being, for God is in the process of becoming, is in the inner move toward full self-realization. And human being, who is capable to adopt or to reject the God’s “call,” is the crucial stage of God’s formation. For this tradition of theodicy, exactly human creative act and the direction of this act have the main role in world history.

Что такое номинативный язык общества? Философский анализ социальной теории О. Розенштока-Хюсси

The article presents an analysis of the social aspect of language based on the methodological ideas of E. Rosenstock-Huessy. The approach of the sophist to the analysis of social phenomena is based on the idea of an inextricable connection between the processes of thinking, speech, and communication, which are founded in language. Language is considered by the philosopher not only as a semantic structure, but also as a force that changes people and society. Such a speech approach to the analysis of society outlines some possible ways out of the social crisis in which modern European culture finds itself. Rosenstock-Huessy understands the power of language from a dialogical point of view as the power of speech, capable of establishing long-term and free relations between people. Embedded in the process of dialogical thought of the twentieth century, the philosophy of Rosenstock-Huessy seeks to overcome the language of Modern science, which reduced the human personality to an impersonal subject of knowledge. Criticizing the entire Western philosophical tradition for its monologue and striving for "pure" knowledge, Rosenstock-Huessy sees the goal of thinking in dialogic speech, transforming both the speaker and the listener. Rosenstock-Huessy introduces the original concept of the name into philosophical circulation. The name in his social theory is an intermediary between language and society, providing the processes of normal social communication. In this regard, the authors of the article consider it useful for social philosophy and sociology to introduce the concept of "nominative social practices": this concept makes it possible to clarify the role of imperative speech in the processes of socialization. As a result of studying the social philosophy of the thinker, the authors propose the concept of "nominative language" as a system of social names and nominative practices. The relevance of addressing the nominative language of society is determined, according to the authors, by its social problems, in particular, by the dysfunction of names in modern society.

THE RATIONALITY WARS: THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND THE COUNTER‐ENLIGHTENMENT IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA

ABSTRACTAmid contemporary discussions about the relationship of logic to knowing, an entirely different conversation about the moral status of rationality is taking place between Chinese and Western thinkers. Although most would agree that deductive thought has been a highly privileged feature of the Western philosophical tradition since Plato (for good or bad), the question of its role in Confucian thought is less clear—and considerations of this topic tend to be highly charged. In turn, the question of whether the West has been tarred by a Weberian descent into a merely instrumental form of rationality has emerged as a hot topic in Chinese scholarship. However, the question merely supplies a way of engaging in cross‐cultural comparisons that are political rather than genuinely philosophical in nature. This article explores the sparring over terminology and concepts that characterizes this recent trend in scholarship. Ultimately, it suggests that instead of Chinese scholars appropriating the ideas of Western authors in order to raise anti‐Western specters of spiritual derangement, both traditions would be better off discarding this outdated and essentializing terminology in the first place.

A Critical Recuperation of Watsuji\u2019s Rinrigaku

Watsuji is recognised as one Japan’s foremost philosophers. His work on ethics, Rinrigaku, is cosmopolitan in engaging the Western philosophical tradition, and in presupposing an international audience. Yet Watsuji’s ethical thought is largely of niche interest outside Japan, and it is critiqued on the ground that it ratifies totalitarianism, demanding individuals’ unquestioning subordination to communal demands. We offer a reading of Rinrigaku that, in attempting to trace the text’s intention, disputes these arguments. We argue that Rinrigaku makes individual autonomy central to ethical action, despite the fact that its treatment of coercion may lead one to think otherwise; that it does not reduce ethical obligations to whatever demands any given society imposes on its members; that it draws a distinction between socio-ethical orders that are genuinely ethical and those that are not; and that, in insisting on the grounding of individuals in the Absolute, it makes adequate room for individuals’ resistance to unjustifiable socio-ethical demands.

Ancient assumptions of contemporary considerations of nature, life and non-human living beings

Advocates of the questioning of the dominant anthropocentric perspective of the world have been increasingly strongly presenting (bio)ethical demands for a new solution of the relationship between humans and other beings, saying that adherence to the Western philosophical and theological traditions has caused the current environmental, and not just environmental, crisis. The attempts are being made to establish a new relationship by relativizing the differences between man and the non-human living beings, often by attributing specifically human traits and categories, such as dignity, moral status and rights to non-human living beings. The author explores antecedents of the standpoints that deviate from the mainstream Western philosophy, in terms of non-anthropocentric extension of ethics, and finds them in the fragments of first physicists, which emphasize kinship of all varieties of life. Pythagoras, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Democritus, in this context, considered certain animals and plants as sacred, i.e. they believed that they are, in a sense, responsible for what they do and that they apart from being able to be driven by a natural desire, being able to breathe, feel, be sad and happy, also have a soul, power of discernment, awareness, the ability to think, understanding and mind. Finally, the author believes that solutions or mitigation of the mentioned crisis are not in the simple Aesopeian levelling of animals and plants "upwards", but in an adequate paideutic approach which in humans will develop an inherent (bio)ethical model of accepting non-human living beings as creatures who deserve moral and decent treatment and respect.

“Just a Swinging Door” – Examining the Egocentric Misconception of Meditation

Various kinds of contemplative practices have been a part of the western philosophical tradition since the Age of Antiquity. Today, however, philosophy as a way of life has ceased to be an integral part of academic practice. The capability to gain knowledge or understanding is believed to come out of pure intellectual endeavor, without exercising the mind and body holistically. This has created a blind spot for philosophy, where no profound pedagogical and moral transformation of subjectivity can be articulated. Furthermore, meditation practices have often been understood as egoistic, apolitical activity. Our purpose is to suggest that this understanding is due to the liberalist and Cartesian tradition of subjectivity today widely proliferated in education. However, through an analysis of a meditation exercise in breathing, it is possible to deconstruct these notions and open novel vistas for thinking about the relationship between truth and subjectivity in education. A simple breathing exercise can dissolve the dualisms ingrained in occidental philosophy and culture - which has many socio-political implications for educational theory and praxis

Under the Eye of Others (the Socialized Interpretation of Shame in the History of Ethics)

The main purpose of the article is to reconstruct the development of a socialized interpretation of shame in the Western philosophical tradition from antiquity up to the 17th century. Along with the standard methods of conducting research in the history of philosophy (critical, comparative, hermeneutical, etc.), the author resorts to a strategy of identifying the historical sources and rudimentary forms of contemporary theoretical approaches to understanding moral phenomena. With regard to shame, there are three such approaches, or three interpretations: socialized (identifying shame with negative feelings about a real or imagined loss of face), anthropological (identifying shame with a painful reaction to the generic imperfection of a person in the sphere of corporeality) and desocialized (identifying shame with negative feelings of an individual generated by the awareness of the worthlessness of his own moral character). Studying the development of each of them requires an understanding of how they historically interacted with each other. The first detailed description of shame from the socialized perspective was proposed by Aristotle. In it, shame appears as a fear of disrepute or suffering from it, that is, a negative feeling that presupposes that other people know that an individual has committed an objectively vicious act or that he does not have some objectively valuable quality. Aristotle viewed shame as a less perfect moral trait than virtue (in contemporary socialized conceptions of shame, guilt is usually its more perfect alternative). Thomas Aquinas relies on the Aristotelian understanding of shame, but: a) connects it with the anthropological interpretation proposed by Augustine, b) makes a special emphasis on the fact that shame is appropriate only in the case of the sinfulness of the act. The early modern socialized conceptions of shame are characterized by a movement from doubt about the reasonableness of this feeling to its partial or complete rehabilitation. At the same time, R. Descartes, B. Spinoza and J. Locke, unlike Aristotle and Thomas, approve of shame not only because it is an imperfect counterpart of virtue, but also in connection with its positive social role (as a means of social discipline and an expression of sociability). Although early modern thinkers discuss moral emotions of self-assessment that are not mediated by the “eye of others” (repentance, remorse), they do not oppose them to shame

Biblical theology for oral-preference communities

Teaching in a non-individualist oral-preference culture in Indonesia, I have encountered the mismatch of theology developed for Western cultures and the needs of my students and their congregations that characterizes much postcolonial theological education. The use of proverbs and poetry as resources for theology addresses the need for theology to inspire and guide, but not the critical function of guarding responsible interpretation. Western theology has done the latter via abstraction of the biblical material into consistent propositional systems, an approach that also functions to inspire and guide for many of the highly literate people who developed Western theology. This connects with the deep Western philosophical tradition of finding order through abstraction, whereas oral and even literate Asian cultures create order through ritual. The Bible is not Western, however, and we show how the biblical story or theo-drama guides, guards, and inspires in a way that opens space for local theology. We then show how the identity of believers within this story is best developed for people in non-individualist cultures through ecclesial metaphors that in turn connect with divine metaphors. Three such “divine-ecclesial institutions” are sketched, namely family, kingdom, and cult. They shed light on missiological issues such as the priority of personal growth versus ritual observance. They provide a way of organizing the biblical material that offers a better starting point for the dialogue of contextualization than systematic Western theology.

Una breve historia filosófica sobre la función social de la propiedad privada en Filipinas

Según el Buda, todos buscamos el cese eterno del sufrimiento. Es el objetivo final de nuestra existencia sobre el cual no tenemos otra opción. Debido a esta “supremacía”, impregna explícita o implícitamente todo lo que hacemos. Debido a la falta de elección, lo que sea que conduzca hacia él debe ser necesariamente moral. A primera vista, este artículo trata sobre un principio legal para regular y asignar la propiedad privada: la Función Social. Sin embargo, dado que este principio es una creación humana, es inevitablemente una expresión de una filosofía moral sobre cómo lograr lo mejor que estamos obligados a perseguir, y el papel que juega la propiedad en esa búsqueda. Como filosofía, es una colección de verdades afirmadas. Pero para evaluar adecuadamente estas afirmaciones, primero es necesario tener una teoría de la verdad (epistemología) y una teoría de la realidad (ontología) apropiadas porque, como la unidad del espacio-tiempo, son epistemo-ontolo-morales. Cometer un error en uno es cometer un error en todos. En consecuencia, la Sección B está dedicada al desarrollo de un marco epistemo-ontológico que nos permitirá comparar, manzanas con manzanas, todas las filosofías en términos de sus valores de verdad. En el proceso, corregiremos los errores epistemo-ontológicos de la tradición filosófica occidental utilizando la solución del filósofo budista Nagarjuna al problema de inducción que ha afectado a esta tradición desde la época de Hume en la década de 1700. En la Sección C, aplicaremos este marco para comparar y evaluar dos (2) filosofías morales: la ley natural de Locke y Grotius. Mostraremos que sus valores de verdad son ambos “falsos”. Luego, extrapolaremos sus soluciones probables a este problema ficticio: supongamos que hay nueve (9) adultos sanos y un bebé con enfermedad terminal en un bote salvavidas hundido y hacinado a la deriva en el mar . Para sobrevivir, uno de ellos tiene que ser arrojado por la borda. Los adultos deciden sacrificar al bebé. ¿Es su decisión moral? Las soluciones resaltarán sus diferentes nociones del bien común y las posiciones sobre la redistribución de la riqueza: ¿es moral tomar de los ricos y dar a los pobres? Esto a su vez acentuará la diferencia de la Función Social de otros principios legales regulatorios y asignativos. En la Sección D, estas filosofías se situarán dentro de un contexto histórico para rastrear la evolución filohistórica de la Función Social de Filipinas. En la Sección E, integraremos nuestra epistemo-ontología con una teoría budista de la moralidad para comprender por qué la correcta epistemología y ontología es un prerrequisito indispensable para alcanzar el objetivo final de nuestras vidas. Por último, en la Sección F, concluiremos que, dado que la Función Social, tal como se construye actualmente, se basa en una filosofía falsa, es como mucho un expediente mientras Filipinas busca el camino correcto hacia la verdadera libertad.Recibido: 07.11.2019Aceptado: 20.12.2019Publicación en línea: 03.07.2020

Realisme Kritis Roy Bhaskar: ‘Pelayan’ Filosofis untuk Ilmu-Ilmu Sosial Emansipatoris

Artikel ini bertujuan untuk memperkenalkan sistem filsafat Roy Bhaskar yang dikenal dengan sebutan realism kritis (critical realism). Pusat perhatian akan diarahkan pada tiga fase perkembangan dalam sistem filsafat Roy Bhaskar, dengan meletakkan masing-masing fase sebagai respon terhadap problem dalam filsafat ilmu dan tradisi filsafat Barat arus utama serta problem-problem sosial dan kemanusiaan secara umum. Artikel ini disusun dengan menggunakan analisis berbasis-literatur, dengan mengkaji karya-karya Bhaskar, pendukung, maupun pengkritiknya. Berdasarkan analisis tersebut, artikel ini berpendapat bahwa filsafat Roy Bhaskar menyediakan suatu pondasi berpikir yang kokoh bagi ilmu-ilmu sosial dan kemanusiaan, khususnya ilmu-ilmu sosial emansipatoris. Ini dilakukan dengan cara memulihkan kembali dimensi ontologis dari ilmu dan selanjutnya dimensi ontologi yang lebih mendalam (deep ontology) dari dunia ini dimana kita berada, yang disingkirkan dan diabaikan oleh tradisi filsafat Barat arus utama, baik modern maupun kontemporer. Komitmen pada ontologi ilmu dan kedalaman ontologi dari dunia ini menghasilkan pondasi bagi ilmu-ilmu sosial dan kemanusiaan yang lebih memadai dan kemungkinan realisasinya bagi proyek emansipasi diri manusia.