Showing papers on "Realism published in 2003"

Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order

Abstract: Robert Kagan asserts that on international issues, "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus" (p. 3). Picking up on classical gender associations recirculated by John Gray's advice books, this catchphrase projects onto transatlantic relations sexy notions about the supposed differences between men and women. The analogy mobilizes conventional assumptions about the supposed biological determinants of sexual difference in support of what Kagan sees as another essential truth: "The United States and Europe are fundamentally different today" (p. 6). Although Kagan's analysis is in places sophisticated, it relies on narrow, even simplistic, concepts of power, strength, and weakness. While Kagan finds power "the all important question" (p. 3), he considers only military power efficacious. In his supposedly realistic world, neither economic and political pressures, nor cultural influence and ideology (save for ideas about the use of military force) have much impact. Kagan discusses the rise of the Nazis without reference to the Great Depression, which elevated what had remained a minor party during German prosperity. Nor does he mention that until 1939, leaders in the Western democracies appreciated the internal order secured by fascism in Italy and Germany while they worried that another war would spawn communist revolutions. Ignoring such textbook history, Kagan focuses on what he calls the "psychologies of power and weakness": in the inter-war period, "a frightened France" and "the traumatized British" (p. 12) tried "to make a virtue out of weakness" (p. 13). This narrow view of power and motivation fits the book's rhetorical structure: a simplifying, polarized depiction of the post-Cold War era. In this setup, robust Americans act on realism, while less manly Europeans display "fundamental and enduring weakness" (p. 28), military "impotence" (p. 46), and an "anemic" foreign policy (p. 65). Rejecting power, Europeans opt instead for "exuberant idealism" (p. 60) and "more and more shrill..,. attacks on the United States" (p. 100). Kagan stresses Europe's "relative weakness," reiterating the point on almost every page. By depicting Europe's post-1989 decision not to match American spending on advanced weapons as a failure of will that led to "inadequacies" (p. 24), he denigrates non-military power while justifying Washington's actions. "Given a weak Europe ... the United States has no choice but to act unilaterally" (p. 99). Kagan argues that Europeans, sheltered by Washington from the "brutal laws of power politics"(p. 58), are "settling into their postmodern paradise and proselytizing for their doctrines of international law and international institutions" (p. 76). While such "doctrines" appear to the author and to many in Washington as indulgent idealism, to worldly Cold Warriors such as Dean Acheson they appeared as useful adjuncts to American hegemony. Despite the sneer at Europe and at norms of peace and cooperation still held by most Americans, Kagan's ultimate target lies "outside the laws of

Color realism and color science.

Abstract: The target article is an attempt to make some progress on the problem of color realism. Are objects colored? And what is the nature of the color properties? We defend the view that physical objects (for instance, tomatoes, radishes, and rubies) are colored, and that colors are physical properties, specifically, types of reflectance. This is probably a minority opinion, at least among color scientists. Textbooks frequently claim that physical objects are not colored, and that the colors are "subjective" or "in the mind." The article has two other purposes: First, to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate. The first part explains the problem of color realism and makes some useful distinctions. These distinctions are then used to expose various confusions that often prevent people from seeing that the issues are genuine and difficult, and that the problem of color realism ought to be of interest to anyone working in the field of color science. The second part explains the various leading answers to the prob- lem of color realism, and (briefly) argues that all views other than our own have serious difficulties or are unmotivated. The third part explains and motivates our own view, that colors are types of reflectances and defends it against objections made in the recent literature that are often taken as fatal.

The Truth of Ecology: Nature, Culture, and Literature in America

Abstract: The Truth of Ecology is a wide-ranging, polemical appraisal of contemporary environmental thought Focusing on the new field of ecocriticism from a thoroughly interdisciplinary perspective, this book explores topics as diverse as the history of ecology in the United States; the distortions of popular environmental thought; the influence of Critical Theory on radical science studies and radical ecology; the need for greater theoretical sophistication in ecocriticism; the contradictions of contemporary American nature writing; and the possibilities for a less devotional, "wilder" approach to ecocritical and environmental thinking Taking his cues from Thoreau, Stevens, and Ammons, from Wittgenstein, Barthes and Eco, from Bruno Latour and Michel Serres, from the philosophers Rorty, Hacking, and Dennett, and from the biologists Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould, author Dana Phillips emphasizes an eclectic but pragmatic approach to a variety of topics His subject matter includes the doctrine of social construction; the question of what it means to be interdisciplinary; the disparity between scientific and literary versions of realism; the difficulty of resolving the tension between facts and values, or more broadly, between nature and culture; the American obsession with personal experience; and the intellectual challenges posed by natural history Those challenges range from the near-impossibility of defining ecological concepts with precision to the complications that arise when a birder tries to identify chickadees in poor light on a winter's afternoon in the Poconos

Reading Realism: Audiences' Evaluations of the Reality of Media Texts

Abstract: Forty-seven young adults participated in a series of focus group interviews designed to investigate how audiences conceptualize media realism. Contrasts in the way realism was defined and applied in the interviews and explicit statements by the participants supported previous findings that realism perceptions are multidimensional. The participants' discussions encompassed 6 distinct means of evaluating the realism of media texts: plausibility, typicality, factuality, emotional involvement, narrative consistency, and perceptual persuasiveness. Plausibility was the most readily discussed conceptualization. Different realism conceptualizations tended to be used for different media genres and the conceptualizations tended to focus on different features of the evaluated text. This article discusses the relationship of audience perceptions to scholars' conceptualizations and addresses implications for measuring media realism.

Realism and Human Kinds

Abstract: It is often noted that institutional objects and artifacts depend on human beliefs and intentions and so fail to meet the realist paradigm of mind-independent objects. In this paper I draw out exactly in what ways the thesis of mind-independence fails, and show that it has some surprising consequences. For the specific forms of mind-dependence involved entail that we have certain forms of epistemic privilege with regard to our own institutional and artifactual kinds, protecting us from certain possibilities of ignorance and error; they also demonstrate that not all cases of reference to these kinds can pro ceed along a purely causal model. As a result, realist views in ontology, epistemology, and semantics that were developed with natural scientific kinds in mind cannot fully apply to the kinds of the social and human sciences. In closing I consider some wider consequences of these results for social science and philosophy. Three elements of a realist philosophical world-view seem to go together: The ontological view that there are kinds of things that exist and have their nature independently of human beliefs, representations, and practices; the epistemological view that acquiring knowledge about such kinds is thus a matter of substantive discovery in the face of possibilities of gross error and ignorance; and the semantic view that reference to these kinds proceeds via a causal relation to an ostended sample, so that the extension of the term is determined by the real nature of the kind rather than by our associated beliefs and concepts, enabling us to refer to the kind despite our possible ignorance and error regarding its nature. A general realist position, however, requires only that the realist hold that there are some things and kinds that exist independently of the mental?not that everything is independent.1 Thus many realists are willing to accept that, along with independent natural kinds and objects, there are also (e.g.) institu tional objects and artifacts that neither exist nor have their natures independ ently of all human beliefs, representations and practices. The idea that such objects differ ontologically from the realist's paradigm independent objects is usually taken as an unimportant triviality; e.g., Michael Devitt notes 'The world that the Realist is primarily interested in defending is independent of us Pace Crawford Elder [1989], who argues that the realist must hold that beliefs about all components of the world may be massively false, and so must either deny that culturally generated kinds are constituted by social beliefs or deny their existence.

Three varieties of realism in computer graphics

Abstract: This paper describes three varieties of realism that need to be considered in evaluating computer graphics images and defines the criteria that need to be met if each kind of realism is to be achieved. The paper introduces a conceptual framework for thinking about realism in images, and describes a set of research tools for measuring image realism and assessing its value in graphics applications.

Realism and Constructivism in Twentieth-Century Moral Philosophy

Abstract: In this paper I trace the development of one of the central debates of late twentieth-century moral philosophy-the debate between realism and what Rawls called "constructivism." Realism, I argue, is a reactive position that arises in response to almost every attempt to give a substantive explanation of morality. It results from the realist's belief that such explanations inevitably reduce moral phenomena to natural phenomena. I trace this belief, and the essence of realism, to a view about the nature of concepts-that it is the function of all concepts to describe reality. Constructivism may be understood as the alternative view that a normative concept refers schematically to the solution to a practical problem. A constructivist account of a concept, unlike a traditional analysis, is an attempt to work out the solution to that problem. I explain how the philosophies of Kant and Rawls can be understood on this model.

Self-Interpretation, Agency, and the Objects of Anthropology: Reflections on a Genealogy

Abstract: If there is anything that exemplifies a certain common style in ethnographically-oriented approaches to culture and society today, and sets them apart from other kinds of social science, it is the habit, irritating to colleagues in some other disciplines, frustrating to students, deemed perverse by potential funders, and bewildering to the public, of responding to explanations with the remark, “We need to complicate the story.” The words “reductionist” and “essentializing” are brandished with scorn. One important perspective is expressed by this remark by Jean and John Comaroff, two influential anthropologists with solid roots in longterm fieldwork, the sobriety of British social anthropology, and the tough-minded realism of the Marxist tradition: ethnography “refuses to put its trust in techniques that give more scientific methods their illusory objectivity: their commitment to standardized, a priori units of analysis, for example, or their reliance on a depersonalizing gaze that separates subject from object” (1992:8). These words, offered almost in passing, take a host of important arguments as settled. One is that it is no longer in much dispute that cultural anthropology is not merely at an “immature” stage, en route to something more akin to natural science. Most significant, perhaps, is the assumption that the separation of subject from object can be understood only in negative terms, that to say that a field of knowledge “depersonalizes” is ipso facto to discredit it. Yet in their own ethnographic and historical work the Comaroffs take their empirical materials very seriously and do not wholly reject the separation of subject from object—how could they? What is at issue, rather, is what kinds of “objects” and “subjects,” and what categories of analysis and comparison, are epistemologically appropriate and ethically legitimate for the study of social actions and self-understandings.

British Television Drama: A History

Abstract: The early development of television drama - 1936-54 popular drama and social realism - 1955-61 British TV drama comes of age - 1962-9 history, realism and ideology - 1970-9 TV drama and Thatcherism - 1980-90 reinventing TV drama - 1991-2001.

Glimmer of a New Leviathan: Total War in the Realism of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz

Abstract: The Second World War put an end to America’s historical isolation from international power politics, and so also to the long-standing American defiance of the Realist ideology that shaped Old World affairs The advent of transoceanic military technologies, now wielded by menacing states such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, made Americans more receptive to the Realist idea that international relations is about fear and survival The American Realists Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz developed a modern strategic framework that sought to introduce American leaders and the educated public to these harsher realities of international politics They emphasized a clear-eyed, cold approach to the play of interests, egotism, and the drive for power in world affairs—a struggle in which the threat of major war remained, in the end, the only legitimate currency Yet even as Americans began to accept this new Realism, thermonuclear weaponry threatened to make it absurd A major war to defend the nation might result in its total destruction; a thermonuclear war leading to the death of hundreds of millions of citizens seemed an unusual way to preserve American survival This dilemma became central to the Realist understanding of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz How could a Realist approach to international politics and war be sustained in the face of possible global annihilation?

Rites of Realism: Essays on Corporeal Cinema

Abstract: Rites of Realism rethinks cinematic realism, shifting discussion away from the usual focus on the faithfulness of record or the illusory effects of verisimilitude towards a notion of "performative realism," a realism that does not simply represent a given reality but enacts actual social tensions. These essays by a range of film theorists propose stimulating new approaches to the critical evaluation of modern realist films and such referential genres as reenactment, historical film, adaptation, portrait films, documentary, and realist depictions of urban life. By providing close readings of classic and contemporary works, Rites of Realism signals the need to return to a focus on films as the main provocateurs and innovators of realist representation. Inspired by the pioneering thought of Andre Bazin, the book features two new translations: of Bazin's 1958 essay "Death Every Afternoon," examining the filming of a bullfight and of Serge Daney's essay reinterpreting imagery invoked by Bazin. These pieces evince key concerns-particularly the link between cinematic realism and representations of the body-that the other essays explore further. Among the topics addressed are the provocative mimesis of Luis Bunuel's Land Without Bread; the adaptation of trial documents in Carl Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc; the use of the tableaux vivant by Wim Wenders and Peter Greenaway; the way Pasolini transposed The Gospel According to Matthew from Palestine to southern Italy; and the variables in urban representation in contemporary Chinese cinema. Contributors also look at the resistance to visibility posed by images of possession in Maya Deren's work and the historical contingencies of identity representation in avant-garde and documentary films of the 1960s, as well as the social geography presented in Mike Leigh's oeuvre and the exemplary dimension of reenactment in films by Antonioni, Cesare Zavattini, Zhang Yuan, and Abbas Kiarostami. Rites of Realism will appeal not only to cinema studies specialists but also to those interested in performance theory and art history. Contributors: Paul Arthur, Andre Bazin, Mark A. Cohen, Serge Daney, Mary Ann Doane, James Lastra, Ivone Margulies, Abe Mark Normes, Brigitte Peucker, Richard Porton, Philip Rosen, Catherine Russell, James Schamus, Noa Steimatsky, and Xiaobing Tang.

A Realist critique of the English School

Abstract: Over the past decade, the English School of International Relations (IR) has made a remarkable resurgence. Countless articles and papers have been written on the School. Some of these works have been critical, but most have applauded the School's efforts to provide a fruitful ‘middle way’ for IR theory, one that avoids the extremes of either an unnecessarily pessimistic realism or a naively optimistic idealism. At the heart of this via media is the idea that, in many periods of history, states exist within an international society of shared rules and norms that conditions their behaviour in ways that could not be predicted by looking at material power structures alone. I f the English School (ES) is correct that states often follow these rules and norms even when their power positions and security interests dictate alternative policies, then American realist theory – a theory that focuses on power and security drives as primary causal forces in global politics – has been dealt a potentially serious blow.

Explaining the Success of a Scientific Theory

Abstract: Scientific realists have claimed that the posit that our theories are (approximately) true provides the best or the only explanation for their success. In response, I revive two nonrealist explanations. I show that realists, in discarding them, have either misconstrued the phenomena to be explained or mischaracterized the relationship between these explanations and their own. I contend nonetheless that these nonrealist competitors, as well as their realist counterparts, should be rejected; for none of them succeed in explaining a significant list of successes. I propose a related nonrealist explanation of success that appears to be the most suitable among those considered.

Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860

Abstract: In this history of intellectual life, Michael O'Brien analyzes the lives and works of antebellum Southern thinkers and in so doing reintegrates the South into the larger tradition of American and European intellectual history. O'Brien finds that the evolution of Southern intellectual life paralleled and modified developments across the Atlantic by moving from a late Enlightenment sensibility to Romanticism and, lastly, to an early form of realism. Volume 1 describes the social underpinnings of the Southern intellect by examining patterns of travel and migration; the formation of ideas on race, gender, ethnicity, locality, and class; and the structures of discourse, expressed in manuscripts and print culture. In Volume 2, O'Brien looks at the genres that became characteristic of Southern thought. Throughout, he pays careful attention to the many individuals who fashioned the Southern mind, including John C. Calhoun, Louisa McCord, James Henley Thornwell, and George Fitzhugh. Placing the South in the larger tradition of American and European intellectual history while recovering the contributions of numerous influential thinkers and writers, O'Brien's masterwork demonstrates the sophistication and complexity of Southern intellectual life before 1860.

Beyond Realism and Antirealism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists

Abstract: Perhaps the most significant development in American philosophy in the late 20th century has been the extraordinary renaissance of pragmatism, marked most notably by the reformulations of the so-called "neopragmatists" Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. With pragmatism offering the allure of potentially resolving the impasse between epistemological realists and antirealists, analytic and continental philosophers, as well as thinkers across the disciplines, have been energized and engaged by this movement. In this volume Hildebrand asks two questions: first, how faithful are the neopragmatists' reformulations of classical pragmatism (particularly Deweyan pragmatism); and, second, and more significantly, can their neopragmatism work?

The Future of Revolutions: Rethinking Radical Change in the Age of Globalization

Abstract: * 1. Introduction to the Future of Revolutions - John Foran * PART I DEFINING THE TERMS OF REVOLUTION AND GLOBALIZATION * 2. Finding the Revolutionary in the Revolution: Social Science Concepts and the Future of Revolution - Jeffery M. Paige * 3. The Democratic Turn: New Ways of Understanding Revolution - Farideh Farhi * 4. Parallaxes: Revolutions and 'Revolution' in a Globalized Imaginary - Noel Parker * PART II RETHINKING REVOLUTIONS IN LIGHT OF GLOBALIZATION * 5. The Renewal of Socialism and the Decline of Revolution - Jeff Goodwin * 6. Will Democratization and Globalization Make Revolutions Obsolete? - Misagh Parsa * 7. Zapata's White Horse and Che's Beret: Theses on the Future of Revolution - Eric Selbin * 8. Between Market Democracies and Capitalist Globalization: Is There Any Prospect for Social Revolution in Latin America? - Carlos Vilas * 9. Globalization, Violence and Revolutions: Nine Theses - Adolfo Gilly * First Thematic Discussion: The Political Economy and GeoPolitics of Globalization: What's Changed? What does it mean for the Future of Revolutions? * PART III LANGUAGES AND STRATEGIES OF THE FUTURE * 10. The Demise of Bolshevism and the Rebirth of Zapatismo: Revolutionary Options in a Post-Soviet World - Christopher A. McAuley * 11. Is the Future of Revolution Feminist? Rewriting 'Gender and Revolutions' for a Globalizing World - Valentine Moghadam * 12. Revolutionary Practices of Freedom at the Crossroads of Globalization: Participatory Democracy as a Possible Medium of Future Revolutionary Struggle - Abdollah Dashti * 13. Globalization, Technopolitics, and Revolution - Douglas Kellner * Second Thematic Discussion: The Shaping of Revolutions by Culture and Agency and by Race, Class, and Gender * PART IV: FROM AFGHANISTAN TO THE ZAPATISTAS * 14. Globalization and Popular Movements - John Walton * 15. Marching with the Taliban or Dancing with the Zapatistas? Revolution after the Cold War - Karen Kampwirth * 16. The Zapatista Rebellion in the Context of Globalization - Jane F. and George A. Collier * 17. Overthrowing the Fathers: Prospects for Revolutionary Transformation in the Twenty-first Century Arab Gulf Monarchies - Mary Ann T'treault * PART V: WILL THE FUTURE BE BETTER? * 18. Magical Realism: How Might the Revolutions of the Future Have Better End (ing) s? - John Foran * Third Thematic Discussion: How Might the Revolutions of the Future Have Better Outcomes? * Afterword - Utopian Realism: The Challenge for 'Revolution' in Our Times - Fred Halliday * Bibliography * Notes on Contributors * Index

Realism, regularity and social explanation

Abstract: Stephen Kemp and John Holmwood, Realism, Regularity and Social Explanation, pp. 165–187. This article explores the difficulties raised for social scientific investigation by the absence of experiment, critically reviewing realist responses to the problem such as those offered by Bhaskar, Collier and Sayer. It suggests that realist arguments for a shift from prediction to explanation, the use of abstraction, and reliance upon interpretive forms of investigation fail to demonstrate that these approaches compensate for the lack of experimental control. Instead, it is argued that the search for regularities, when suitably conceived, provides the best alternative to experiment for the social sciences.

The Serious Pleasures of Suspense: Victorian Realism and Narrative Doubt

Abstract: Scholars have long recognized that narrative suspense dominates the formal dynamics of 19th-century British fiction, both high and low. But few have asked why suspense played such a crucial role in the Victorian novel and in Victorian culture more broadly. This study argues that a startling array of 19th-century thinkers - from John Ruskin to Michael Faraday to Charlotte Bronte and Wilkie Collins - saw suspense as the perfect vehicle for a radically new approach to knowledge that they called "realism". Although by convention suspense has belonged to the realm of sensational mysteries and gothic horrors, and realism to the world of sober, reformist, middle-class domesticity, the two were in fact inextricably intertwined. The real was defined precisely as that which did not belong to the mind, that which stood separate from patterns of thought and belief. In order to get at the truth of the real, readers would have to learn to suspend their judgement. Suspenseful plots were the ideal vehicles for disseminating this experience of doubt, training readers to pause before leaping to conclusions. Far from being merely low or sensational, the mysteries of many plotted texts were intended to introduce readers to a rigorous epistemological training borrowed from science. And far from being complacently conservative, suspense was deliberately employed to encourage a commitment to scepticism and uncertainty. Carole Levine argues convincingly that the 19th-century critics were not wrong about suspense: the classic readerly text was indeed far more writerly - dynamic, critical, questioning and indeterminate - than modern critics have been inclined to imagine. Offering official readings of canonical texts, including "Jane Eyre", "Great Expectations", "The Moonstone" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray", and drawing on a range of historical sources, from popular fiction and art criticism to the philosophy of science and scientific biography, Levine combines narrative theory and the history of ideas to offer a rereading of 19th-century realism.

Worldviews in Foreign Policy: Realism, Liberalism, and External Conflict

Abstract: International relations studies have been unable to determine whether realist or liberal theories better fit state behavior in various situations, possibly because these studies have attributed motive and action to the states rather than to the decision-makers within them. This article develops a new, more direct approach to resolving this problem. Hypotheses were tested regarding conditions under which decision-makers are likely to articulate a problem representation consistent with liberal or realist elements of a worldview. This was done by content analysis of statements about 36 foreign conflicts by the governments of three “bystander” nations—the United States, Canada, and India—over a 16-year period. The findings indicate that systemic and situational factors are far more important than domestic factors. States tend to represent wars in congruence with liberalism primarily when their security is already assured by another power or when the conflict does not involve allies, rivals, or fellow democracies. Thus, most of the expectations of realism are supported at the psychological level.

Structural Realism in a more complex world

Abstract: The editors of the Review of International Studies have posed a timely challenge to what they term American realism. In broad terms, their editorial makes two points: first, realism has lost its relevance to current international policy; and second, realism does a poor job of explaining the behaviour of the world's major powers. In this brief essay I argue that both of these points are greatly overstated, if not simply wrong. At the same time, I accept that realism provides less leverage in addressing the full spectrum of issues facing the major powers in the post-Soviet and now the post-9/11 world than it did during the Cold War. However, this is neither surprising nor a serious problem, because scholars who use a realist lens to understand international politics can, and have, without inconsistency or contradiction also employed other theories to understand issues that fall outside realism's central focus.

Fragmented Identities: Popular Culture, Sex, and Everyday Life in Postcommunist Romania

Abstract: Part 1 Everyday Life Chapter 2 A Flaneur through Bucharest at the End of the Twentieth Century Chapter 3 Discourses, Identities, and Practices of Everyday Life Part 4 Popular Culture Chapter 5 Aesthetics and Politics: From "Socialist Realism" to "Postcommunist Carnivalesque" Chapter 6 "Blue Jeans Generation" and "Generation PRO": Youth, Pop Culture, and Politics Chapter 7 Popular Culture and the Discourse of Hate: The Case of Anti-Semitism Part 8 Gender and Sexuality Chapter 9 The Postcommunist Feminine Mystique: Women as Subjects, Women and Politics Chapter 10 Between Ars Erotica and Scientia Sexualis: Queer Subjectivity and the Discourse of Sex

It is kind to be cruel: the humanity of American Realism

Abstract: ‘No one loves a political realist’, Robert Gilpin once lamented. A major reason for this hostility towards realism is its sceptical view of the role of ethical norms (principled beliefs about state action) in international relations. Some critics dislike realism because they think it leads to an immoral international order. Thucydides' famous adage that the ‘strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’ is widely interpreted as evidence that one of realism's founding fathers was an advocate of an immoral approach to statecraft. Niccolo Machiavelli's well-known advice to his Prince that it is politics that determines ethics, not vice versa, reinforces these widely-held views of realism's amorality. The fact that modern realism has been influenced by unsavoury individuals like the German theorist Carl Schmitt, whose indisputable intellectual brilliance was tainted by his overly close association with the Third Reich, leads many to see a continuing link between realpolitik and evil in the international system. Thus, Richard Ashley spoke for many when he concluded that

Wittgenstein and the end of philosophy : neither theory nor therapy

Abstract: Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction A Focus on Logic Just the Facts? Seeking Clarity Throughout Without Explanation Before Realism and Idealism Description Alone Notes References Index

Naturalizing the Transcendental: A Pragmatic View

Abstract: In this powerful and original work, Finnish philosopher Sami Pihlstrom argues that the transcendental and the pragmatist traditions should converge, or at least supplement each other, instead of being regarded as rivals. According to Pihlstrom, Kant's basic transcendental project - i.e., of investigating the conditions of our ability to experience and represent structured reality - can be reconciled with a naturalist conception of the world and the place of human beings in it. He proposes a workable middle ground between extreme realism on the one hand and extreme postmodernist scepticism and relativism on the other.

The Question of Realism

Abstract: Different countries want different things; sometimes those desires conflict; how then do those conflicts get worked out? This is perhaps the most basic problem in the study of international politic...

The English School vs. American Realism: a meeting of minds or divided by a common language?

Abstract: This Forum has two main aims. First and foremost, it is designed to assess the relevance of American realism in the wake of developments that are considered to have transformed international relations over the past decade. A second aim, but one that is central to my contribution, is to assess whether or not the resurgent English School provides the foundations for an approach that can account more effectively for developments in the post-Cold War world than American realism.

Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain 1939-48

Abstract: 1 Britain Alone 2 War Culture 3 Realism and Tinsel 4 The Rank Empire 5 Great Expectations 6 Passionate Friends 7 Exotic Dreams 8 The Spiv Cycle 9 Morbid Burrowing 10 Nothing to Laugh at at All 11 Challenge to Hollywood.