School #24
Critical Realism
Bhaskar
Critical Realism combines a realist ontology — reality exists independently of our knowledge of it — with a critical epistemology that recognizes all knowledge as historically situated and fallible. Roy Bhaskar's 'A Realist Theory of Science' (1975) introduced the foundational framework, distinguishing three ontological domains: the real (structures and mechanisms that exist whether or not we observe them), the actual (events that occur whether or not we experience them), and the empirical (events as experienced). 'The Possibility of Naturalism' (1979) extended this to the social sciences, arguing that society is real and causally efficacious but ontologically distinct from nature — social structures are reproduced and transformed by human activity, making critical realism simultaneously naturalistic and anti-reductionist. The result is a philosophy that takes science seriously as a fallible but progressive attempt to discover real causal mechanisms, while insisting that the world is deeper, more stratified, and less transparent than any empirical observation can reveal.
Worldview
The critical realist experiences reality as genuinely independent of human thought yet never fully transparent to it — a world of deep structures, hidden mechanisms, and layered strata that reward patient inquiry but always retain an inexhaustible surplus beyond any particular theory. The fundamental orientation is one of humble realism: the world is real and knowable, but our knowledge of it is always partial, fallible, and open to revision. To hold this ontology is to feel the solidity of an independent reality beneath one's feet while acknowledging that the map is never the territory. There is a mature confidence in the scientific enterprise coupled with a refusal to mistake any particular scientific consensus for the final word. The critical realist moves through the world as an investigator, always probing beneath surfaces for the causal mechanisms that generate observable events. The framework classifies this as None: critical realism's stratified ontology runs through natural causation at every level; no personal deity or cosmic ordering principle is required by the framework. The framework reads this as None for moral authority: critical realism's stratified ontology and methodology describe the layered causal world but do not nominate Scripture, Tradition, Reason, or Experience as normatively final over how to act.
Moral Implications
Critical realism supports a robust moral realism: just as the natural world has real structures and powers, so too do social structures possess real causal efficacy, generating patterns of oppression, exploitation, and flourishing that are not merely constructed but objectively operative. Ethical reasoning is understood as fallible but genuinely truth-tracking, capable of identifying real harms and real goods through careful inquiry into the mechanisms that produce them. The critical realist is committed to emancipatory social science — research that unmasks the deep structural causes of suffering and injustice. Responsibility extends beyond individual moral choices to the transformation of social structures that systematically produce harm. Justice is not merely a human projection but a real possibility inherent in the structures of social life.
Practical Implications
Critical realism provides a rigorous philosophical foundation for interdisciplinary research and evidence-based policy, insisting that effective intervention requires understanding the deep causal mechanisms at work rather than merely correlating observable variables. In technology and medicine, it supports a stratified approach: surface symptoms must be traced to underlying generative mechanisms before meaningful solutions can be designed. Environmental policy is grounded in the recognition that ecological systems possess real causal powers and tendencies that operate independently of human observation or economic valuation. In education and governance, critical realism encourages institutional designs that are responsive to the layered complexity of social reality rather than reductive or one-dimensional.
⧖
I. Time
Time is substantival and infinite — a real, objective dimension of a stratified reality that exists independently of our knowledge of it. Time is continuous, linear, and uni-directional. Critical realism insists that the deep structures of temporal reality may not be directly observable but can be known through theoretical inquiry and retroductive reasoning.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Non-Deterministic
Traversability: Linear
Dimensionality: One
Direction: Uni-directional
✦
II. Space
Space is substantival, infinite, and curved — an objective feature of a stratified reality. It is local and three-dimensional, but its deep structure may include unobservable spatial mechanisms and powers. Critical realism holds that our spatial concepts approximate but never fully capture the independent spatial reality.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Curvature: Curved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◉
III. Matter
Matter is substantival, finite, and locally situated — it is a real, independently existing substance within a stratified ontology. Matter possesses real causal powers and tendencies that operate whether or not they are observed. Conservation holds because the deep structures of material reality are real and enduring.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Local
◎
IV. Observer
The observer is an embodied, socially situated being who perceives a real world that exists independently of perception — but whose access to that world is always mediated and fallible. Direct experience is immediate and limited, yet through critical inquiry the observer can penetrate beneath surface appearances to discover the deep structures and causal mechanisms that generate observable phenomena. Knowledge accumulates: each inquiry builds on previous understanding, progressively approximating a reality that is always richer and more layered than any single account. The observer is active — reality is real but our theories about it are human constructs, always open to revision. Multiple observers collaborate in this critical enterprise, pooling perspectives to see past individual biases.
Attributes
Time Instance: Single
Space Instance: Single
Extent of Knowledge: Mediated
Retainment of Knowledge: Partial
Physicality: Embodied
Agency: Active
Number: Plural
Metaphysical Agency: None
Moral Authority: None
Theological Method: N/A
⚡
V. Energy
Energy is substantival and finite — a real feature of the deep structure of physical reality. Conservation is strict: energy obeys objective natural laws whether or not we observe them. Dispersibility is irreversible as a feature of the real temporal ordering of causal processes.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dispersibility: Irreversible
⧉
VI. Information
Real informational structures exist in a stratified reality — some are directly observable, others are deep structural information accessible only through theoretical inquiry. The framework distinguishes scales: information is conserved at the cosmic scale because the stratified real structures of nature persist whether or not anyone knows them, but non-conserved at the personal-identity scale — a person is a high-level emergent that does not survive the dissolution of its underlying generative mechanisms.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Non-conserved
Granularity: Continuous
Films Reading Through This School (1)
Debates Where This School Is Allied (3)
Works that name Critical Realism in their embodiments
Foundational texts that draw on this school, with each work's declared weight.
30%
30%
30%
30%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
25%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
20%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
15%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
5%
The True Story of Ah Q (Mature)
Lu Xun · 1921-22
Reclaiming Reality (Mid)
Roy Bhaskar · 1989
The Poverty of Historicism (Mid-career)
Karl Popper · 1944-45 (Economica articles); book 1957
Objective Knowledge (Late)
Karl Popper · 1972 (essays 1960-72)
Conjectures and Refutations (Mid)
Karl Popper · 1963
The Sociological Imagination (Mid)
C. Wright Mills · 1959
The Culture of Narcissism (Late)
Christopher Lasch · 1979
The Gulag Archipelago (Late)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 1958-68 (composed); 1973-75 (published in Russian abroad)
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Late)
Naomi Klein · 2007
Three Guineas (Late)
Virginia Woolf · 1938 (Hogarth Press)
Brave New World Revisited (Late)
Aldous Huxley · 1958
Parable of the Talents (Late-mature)
Octavia E. Butler · 1998 (Nebula 1999)
A Madman's Diary (Mid-mature)
Lu Xun · 1918
Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (Late)
Roy Bhaskar · 1993
The Beginning of Infinity (Late)
David Deutsch · 2011
Knowledge and Human Interests (Early)
Jürgen Habermas · 1968 (German; English 1971)
The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Early)
Karl Popper · 1934 (Logik der Forschung); 1959 English
The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Late)
Imre Lakatos · 1978 (posthumous; key essays from 1968-71)
Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Late)
Michael Polanyi · 1958 (Gifford Lectures 1951-52 at Aberdeen)
Critique of Cynical Reason (Kritik der zynischen Vernunft) (Mid)
Peter Sloterdijk · 1983
1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four) (Late)
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) · 1949
Escape from Freedom (Mid)
Erich Fromm · 1941
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (La Distinction) (Mid)
Pierre Bourdieu · 1979
Liquid Modernity (Late)
Zygmunt Bauman · 2000
The Fall of Public Man (Mid)
Richard Sennett · 1977
The Sublime Object of Ideology (Mid)
Slavoj Žižek · 1989
Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Le Capital au XXIe siècle) (Late)
Thomas Piketty · 2013 (French); 2014 (English)
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Mature (Lanier's short polemical follow-up to Who Owns the Future?, 2013, and Dawn of the New Everything, 2017))
Jaron Lanier · 2018
On Conjectures (Mature (the systematic epistemological development of the docta-ignorantia framework))
Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus) · c. 1442-43 (composed shortly after De Docta Ignorantia, dedicated to Cardinal Cesarini)
Custer Died for Your Sins (Mature (Deloria's breakthrough book, written at 36))
Vine Deloria Jr. · 1969 (Macmillan)
Between the Acts (Last)
Virginia Woolf · 1940-41 (Hogarth, posthumous July 1941; Woolf died March 28, 1941)
Gyn/Ecology (Mature)
Mary Daly · 1978 (Beacon Press)
Politics and Conscience (Mature (composed during Havel's dissident period before the 1989 Velvet Revolution))
Václav Havel · 1984 (composed in Czechoslovakia under Communist authority; prepared as the acceptance speech for an honorary degree from the University of Toulouse that Havel could not attend)
Parable of the Sower (Mature)
Octavia E. Butler · 1993
Notes of a Native Son (Mid-mature)
James Baldwin · 1955
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle (edited by Nicomachus) · c. 340 BC (lecture notes, Lyceum period)
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin · 1859 (first edition); five subsequent revised editions in Darwin's lifetime
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Late)
John Henry Newman · 1870
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville · Volume I 1835; Volume II 1840 (based on Tocqueville's 1831–32 American journey)
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Early (the breakthrough work))
Jürgen Habermas · 1962 (habilitation thesis; English translation 1989)
Dialectic of Enlightenment (Mid)
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer · 1944 (private circulation); 1947 (Amsterdam edition)
Negative Dialectics (Late)
Theodor W. Adorno · 1966 (German; English 1973)
Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (Mid)
Theodor W. Adorno · 1944-47 (composed); 1951 (published)
Eclipse of Reason (Mid)
Max Horkheimer · 1947 (English original; German edition 1967)
One-Dimensional Man (Late)
Herbert Marcuse · 1964
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Late)
Walter Benjamin · 1935-36 (multiple versions); first published 1936 in French
Between Facts and Norms (Late)
Jürgen Habermas · 1992 (German; English 1996)
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Mid)
Jürgen Habermas · 1985 (German; English 1987)
Orientalism (Mid)
Edward W. Said · 1978
Culture and Imperialism (Late)
Edward W. Said · 1993
Patterns of Discovery (Early)
Norwood Russell Hanson · 1958
Justice and the Politics of Difference (Mid)
Iris Marion Young · 1990
Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color (Mid)
Kimberlé Crenshaw · 1991 (Stanford Law Review)
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 1 (Late)
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari · 1972
Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Late)
Giorgio Agamben · 1995
The Idea of Latin America (Late)
Walter D. Mignolo · 2005
Women, Race & Class (Mid)
Angela Y. Davis · 1981
Black Feminist Thought (Mid)
Patricia Hill Collins · 1990 (2nd edn 2000)
The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (La Théorie physique: son objet, sa structure) (Late)
Pierre Duhem · 1906
The Essential Tension (Late)
Thomas S. Kuhn · 1977
A Room of One's Own (Late)
Virginia Woolf · 1929
Cosmopolitics (Late)
Isabelle Stengers · 2003-11 (French in 7 vols; English in 2 vols)
The Black Swan (Late)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 2007
If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo) (Mid)
Primo Levi · 1947 (rev. 1958)
Austerlitz (Late)
W.G. Sebald · 2001
Duration and Simultaneity (Mature (the disastrous engagement with Einstein that damaged Bergson's standing among physicists))
Henri Bergson · 1922 (Durée et Simultanéité: à propos de la théorie d'Einstein, Paris: Alcan; revised 2nd edn 1923)
On Violence (Late (Arendt's most-cited short political essay, written in response to the 1968 student movements))
Hannah Arendt · 1969 (New York Review of Books, Feb 27); 1970 (Harcourt expanded book edition)
The Undiscovered Self (Late (one of Jung's last short works, written at 82))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1957 (Schweizer Monatshefte; book edition Rascher, Zurich; English trans. R.F.C. Hull, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1958)
Race Matters (Mature (the book that established West as a major public intellectual))
Cornel West · 1993 (Beacon Press; 25th anniversary edition 2017)
Democracy Matters (Late-mature (the post-9/11 sequel to the 1993 Race Matters))
Cornel West · 2004 (Penguin)
Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (Early (the work that launched Rousseau's career))
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1750 (Discours sur les sciences et les arts, Geneva)
Old Age (Late-mature)
Simone de Beauvoir · 1970 (Gallimard)
A Very Easy Death (Late)
Simone de Beauvoir · 1964 (Gallimard)
Pure Lust (Late-mature)
Mary Daly · 1984 (Beacon Press)
Evangelium Vitae (Late-mature)
Karol Józef Wojtyła / Pope John Paul II · 1995 (Evangelium Vitae, issued March 25, 1995, the feast of the Annunciation)
Disturbing the Peace (Late-dissident (composed three years before the Velvet Revolution))
Václav Havel · 1985-86 (long interview composed by mail between Havel in Prague and Karel Hvížďala in West Germany)
Summer Meditations (Late (the first major post-1989 reflection on the transition from dissidence to governance))
Václav Havel · 1991 (Letní přemítání, composed during Havel's first eighteen months as Czechoslovak president after the November 1989 Velvet Revolution)
Othello (Mature)
William Shakespeare · c. 1603-04 (first performed Whitehall, 1 November 1604)
Antony and Cleopatra (Mature)
William Shakespeare · c. 1606-07
The Tempest (Last (probably Shakespeare's last sole-authored play))
William Shakespeare · c. 1610-11 (first performed Whitehall, 1 November 1611)
Measure for Measure (Mature)
William Shakespeare · c. 1603-04
Resistance to Civil Government (Mature)
Henry David Thoreau · 1849 (first published as "Resistance to Civil Government" in Aesthetic Papers; reprinted posthumously as "Civil Disobedience" in 1866)
A Plea for Captain John Brown (Mature)
Henry David Thoreau · 1859 (delivered as a public address in Concord, Boston, and Worcester, October-November 1859; published 1860)
Slavery in Massachusetts (Mature)
Henry David Thoreau · 1854 (delivered at the antislavery convention, Framingham, July 4, 1854; published in The Liberator and other papers)
Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1811 (first edition); substantially revised 1830 (second edition)
The Allegory of Love (Mature)
C. S. Lewis · 1936 (Oxford UP); Hawthornden Prize 1936
The Discarded Image (Last)
C. S. Lewis · Lectures delivered Oxford 1950s; published posthumously 1964 (Cambridge UP)
De Monarchia (Late)
Dante Alighieri · c. 1313-18 (during Dante's exile)
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Late)
Charles Darwin · 1872 (John Murray, London)
The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (Last)
Charles Darwin · 1881 (John Murray, London) — Darwin's last book, published months before his April 1882 death
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (Mature)
Charles Darwin · 1868 (John Murray, London); revised 1875
Faust I (Mature)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1772-1806 (composed over 35 years; published 1808)
Theory of Colors (Mature)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1810 (J.G. Cotta, Tübingen)
Jesus and the Disinherited (Mature)
Howard Thurman · 1949
Go Tell It on the Mountain (Early)
James Baldwin · 1953
Giovanni's Room (Mid-mature)
James Baldwin · 1956
The Sea of Fertility (Last)
Yukio Mishima · 1965-71 (four-volume tetralogy)
Slavery and Freedom (Late-mature)
Nikolai Berdyaev · 1939 (in Russian; English 1944)
From East to West (Late)
Roy Bhaskar · 2000
The Fabric of Reality (Mid)
David Deutsch · 1997
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Isaac Newton · 1687 (first ed.); 1713, 1726 (second and third revised eds)
Capital, Volume I (Late)
Karl Marx · 1867 (German first ed.); Volume II 1885, Volume III 1894 (posthumous, ed. Engels)
The Communist Manifesto (Early)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels · February 1848 (commissioned by the Communist League, London)
A Theory of Justice
John Rawls · 1971; revised edition 1999
Politics
Aristotle · c. 335 BC (lecture course, Lyceum)
Critique of Judgment (Late)
Immanuel Kant · 1790
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
Charles Sanders Peirce · 1878 (Popular Science Monthly, January)
Phenomenology of Perception
Maurice Merleau-Ponty · 1945
The Human Condition
Hannah Arendt · 1958
Relativity: The Special and General Theory
Albert Einstein · 1916 (German); first English 1920
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins · 1976 (revised editions 1989, 2006)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Galileo Galilei · 1632 (Florence; placed on the Index of Prohibited Books later that year)
Novum Organum
Francis Bacon · 1620 (London; intended as Part II of the never-completed Instauratio Magna)
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn · 1962 (1st ed.); 1970 (2nd ed. with postscript); 1996 (3rd ed.)
The Open Society and Its Enemies
Karl R. Popper · Composed 1938–1943 in New Zealand exile; published 1945 (2 vols)
Theory of Communicative Action
Jürgen Habermas · 1981 (German, 2 vols)
Physics
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (second Athenian period)
Opticks (Late)
Isaac Newton · 1704 (English first edition); 1706 (Latin)
Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Late)
John Henry Newman · 1864 (in seven weekly instalments)
The Origin of German Tragic Drama (Early (the most ambitious early work, before the Arcades Project))
Walter Benjamin · 1925 (submitted as habilitation thesis, rejected by the University of Frankfurt); 1928 (published commercially)
The Concept of Nature (Early-mid (preceding Science and the Modern World, 1925))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1920 (the Tarner Lectures, Trinity College Cambridge)
Eros and Civilization (Mid)
Herbert Marcuse · 1955
Theses on the Philosophy of History (Late)
Walter Benjamin · 1940 (German; English 1968)
Can the Subaltern Speak? (Mid)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak · 1988 (essay in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture; rev. 1999 in Critique of Postcolonial Reason)
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Early)
bell hooks · 1984
Tool-Being (Early (Harman's breakthrough work, derived from his 1999 DePaul PhD))
Graham Harman · 2002
The Uses of Argument (Early)
Stephen Toulmin · 1958
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Mid)
Catharine A. MacKinnon · 1989
The View from Nowhere (Mid)
Thomas Nagel · 1986
On Bullshit (Late)
Harry G. Frankfurt · 1986 (Raritan); 2005 (book)
The Philosophy of Philosophy (Late)
Timothy Williamson · 2007
Écrits (Mid)
Jacques Lacan · 1966 (essays 1936-66)
The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Late)
Jacques Lacan · 1964 (seminar); 1973 (book)
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (Pouvoirs de l'horreur) (Mid)
Julia Kristeva · 1980
Speculum of the Other Woman (Speculum, de l'autre femme) (Mid)
Luce Irigaray · 1974
Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et simulation) (Late)
Jean Baudrillard · 1981
Philosophy of Liberation (Filosofía de la Liberación) (Mid)
Enrique Dussel · 1977
Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana) (Mid)
José Carlos Mariátegui · 1928
Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Mid)
Gloria Anzaldúa · 1987
Toward the African Revolution (Late)
Frantz Fanon · 1952-1961 essays; 1964 (collection)
Silent Spring (Late)
Rachel Carson · 1962
The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Late)
Donna J. Haraway · 2003
Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Late)
John S. Bell · 1987 (papers 1964-86)
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Mid)
Marshall McLuhan · 1964
The Souls of Black Folk (Mid)
W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903
The Education of Henry Adams (Late)
Henry Adams · 1907 (private printing); 1918 (public)
Church: Charism and Power (Igreja: carisma e poder) (Mid)
Leonardo Boff · 1981
Christ the Liberator: A View from the Victims (Late)
Jon Sobrino · 1999 (Spanish); 2001 (English)
God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (Late)
Vine Deloria Jr. · 1973 (2nd edn 1992; 3rd edn 2003)
The Trial (Der Process) (Late)
Franz Kafka · 1914-15 (composed); 1925 (posthumous)
Ulysses (Mid)
James Joyce · 1914-21 (composed); 1922 (published)
Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann) (Mid)
Marcel Proust · 1913
The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) (Late)
Thomas Mann · 1912-24 (composed); 1924 (published)
Middlemarch (Late)
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) · 1871-72
The Sound and the Fury (Mid)
William Faulkner · 1929
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (Mid)
Chögyam Trungpa · 1973 (compiled from 1970-71 lectures)
Metaphors We Live By (Late)
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson · 1980
Animal Liberation (Mid)
Peter Singer · 1975
The Social Construction of Reality (Mid)
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann · 1966
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Late)
Robert D. Putnam · 2000
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Late)
Daniel Kahneman · 2011
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Late)
Jonathan Haidt · 2012
Long Walk to Freedom (Late)
Nelson Mandela · 1994
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Late)
Malcolm X with Alex Haley · 1965
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) (Late)
Milan Kundera · 1984
An Essay on the Principle of Population (Late)
Thomas Robert Malthus · 1798 (1st edn); 1803 (rev. 2nd edn)
The Methods of Ethics (Late)
Henry Sidgwick · 1874 (1st edn); 1907 (7th, definitive)
Principia Ethica (Early)
G.E. Moore · 1903
The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Late (Husserl's last work, written in Freiburg under Nazi proscription))
Edmund Husserl · 1934-37 (parts I & II in Philosophia 1936; full edition Husserliana VI, 1954)
Men in Dark Times (Late (collected from essays spanning more than a decade))
Hannah Arendt · 1968 (Harcourt Brace; essays composed 1955-67, several in New Yorker, Merkur, etc.)
An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (Late (Wollstonecraft's last completed major non-fiction work, three years before her death))
Mary Wollstonecraft · 1794 (Vol. I only — the projected continuation was never written)
My Bondage and My Freedom (Mature (Douglass's second autobiography, written after his break with Garrison and the founding of his own newspaper))
Frederick Douglass · 1855 (Miller, Orton & Mulligan, New York)
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Late (Douglass's third autobiography, covering his post-1855 political career))
Frederick Douglass · 1881 (Park Publishing, Hartford); expanded edition 1892 (De Wolfe, Fiske, Boston)
The Metaphysics of Modern Existence (Mature (Deloria's most ambitious philosophical work))
Vine Deloria Jr. · 1979 (Harper & Row)
The American Evasion of Philosophy (Mature (West's major work of intellectual history, written before the Race Matters celebrity))
Cornel West · 1989 (Wisconsin UP)
Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Last (composed in Rousseau's final two years, after he had retreated from public life))
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1776-78 (unfinished at Rousseau's death; published posthumously 1782)
De Beneficiis (Mid-mature (composed during Seneca's most influential political-philosophical period))
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 56-62 CE (Nero's court, before Seneca's retirement)
Naturales Quaestiones (Late)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 62-64 CE (composed during Seneca's retirement)
De Constantia Sapientis (Mid)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 56 CE (early in Seneca's tenure as Nero's advisor)
On Generation and Corruption (Mature)
Aristotle · c. 350 BC (during Aristotle's mature Lyceum period)
The Mandarins (Mature)
Simone de Beauvoir · 1954 (Gallimard; Prix Goncourt 1954)
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Mature)
Simone de Beauvoir · 1958 (Gallimard)
Orlando (Mature)
Virginia Woolf · 1928 (Hogarth Press)
Philemon (Late)
Paul of Tarsus (Saul / Saint Paul) · c. 60-62 CE (composed in prison alongside Colossians)
Macbeth (Mature)
William Shakespeare · c. 1606
The Maine Woods (Mature-late)
Henry David Thoreau · 1846-57 (three Maine expedition narratives composed across a decade); compiled posthumously 1864
Essays: Second Series (Mature)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1844 (James Munroe & Co., Boston)
Representative Men (Mature)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1850 (Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston; based on lectures delivered 1845-46)
Translation of Plato's dialogues (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1804-28 (multi-volume translation with extensive prefaces and notes)
The Christian Faith (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1821-22 (first edition); substantially revised 1830-31 (second edition, the standard form)
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (Early)
Iris Murdoch · 1953 (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge)
The Sea, The Sea (Late-mature)
Iris Murdoch · 1978 (Chatto & Windus); Booker Prize 1978
The Black Prince (Mature)
Iris Murdoch · 1973 (Chatto & Windus); James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1973
Purgatorio (Mature)
Dante Alighieri · c. 1314-19
The Descent of Man (Mature)
Charles Darwin · 1871 (John Murray, London); revised 1874
Journal of Researches (Early)
Charles Darwin · 1839 (first edition); 1845 (substantially revised second edition)
The Born-Einstein Letters (Mature-late)
Albert Einstein · 1916-55 (correspondence across four decades); published in 1971 (German); English 1971 (Walker)
Faust II (Last)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1825-31 (completed shortly before Goethe's 1832 death; published posthumously 1832)
Patriotism (Mid-mature)
Yukio Mishima · 1961 ("Yūkoku")
Metaphysics
Aristotle (compiled posthumously by Andronicus of Rhodes c. 70 BC) · c. 350 BC (lecture notes, second Athenian period)
Fides et Ratio (Late)
Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) · 14 September 1998 (encyclical letter)
Experience and Nature (Late)
John Dewey · 1925 (Carus Lectures, Chicago; revised 1929)
The Order of Things
Michel Foucault · 1966
On the Genealogy of Morality (Late)
Friedrich Nietzsche · 1887 (composed in 20 days)
After Virtue
Alasdair MacIntyre · 1981 (1st ed.); 1984 (2nd ed.); 2007 (3rd ed., with new prologue)
Laws (Latest)
Plato · Composed late in life (final years before 347 BC); unrevised at his death
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Early)
Karl Marx · Paris, summer 1844 (notebook manuscripts; unfinished and unpublished in Marx's lifetime); first published 1932
The Question Concerning Technology (Late)
Martin Heidegger · 1953 (Munich lecture); 1954 (published)
The Origins of Totalitarianism (Mid (Arendt's breakthrough book))
Hannah Arendt · 1951 (with later editions adding new prefaces and material through 1968)
On Revolution (Late (after Eichmann in Jerusalem))
Hannah Arendt · 1963
The Wretched of the Earth (Late)
Frantz Fanon · 1961 (French; English 1963)
Gender Trouble (Early)
Judith Butler · 1990
Bodies That Matter (Early)
Judith Butler · 1993
Against Method (Mid)
Paul Feyerabend · 1975 (1st edn); 1988 (2nd); 1993 (3rd)
Aspects of Scientific Explanation (Mid)
Carl G. Hempel · 1965
Muqaddimah (Late)
Ibn Khaldūn (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān) · 1377
Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Mathematicians / Professors) (Late)
Sextus Empiricus · c. 180-200 CE
Historical and Critical Dictionary (Dictionnaire Historique et Critique) (Late)
Pierre Bayle · 1697 (2nd expanded edn 1702)
New Science (Late)
Giambattista Vico · 1725 (1st edn); 1730 (2nd); 1744 (3rd, definitive)
The Spirit of the Laws (De l'esprit des lois) (Late)
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu · 1748
Candide (Candide, ou l'Optimisme) (Late)
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1759
Philosophical Letters (Lettres Philosophiques / Lettres Anglaises) (Mid)
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) · 1734
Consciousness Explained (Mid)
Daniel C. Dennett · 1991
Warranted Christian Belief (Late)
Alvin Plantinga · 2000
Reasons and Persons (Mid)
Derek Parfit · 1984
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 2 (Late)
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari · 1980
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (La condition postmoderne) (Late)
Jean-François Lyotard · 1979
African Religions and Philosophy (Mid)
John S. Mbiti · 1969 (2nd edn 1990)
Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Late)
Kwasi Wiredu · 1996
After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (Après la finitude) (Late)
Quentin Meillassoux · 2006
We Have Never Been Modern (Nous n'avons jamais été modernes) (Mid)
Bruno Latour · 1991
Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Late)
Bruno Latour · 2005
A Sand County Almanac (Late)
Aldo Leopold · 1949 (posthumous)
The End of History and the Last Man (Mid)
Francis Fukuyama · 1992
The Emperor's New Mind (Late)
Roger Penrose · 1989
Natural Goodness (Late)
Philippa Foot · 2001
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (Mid)
Mary Midgley · 1978
The Many Faces of Realism (Mid)
Hilary Putnam · 1987
The Social Construction of What? (Late)
Ian Hacking · 1999
The Age of Reason (Late)
Thomas Paine · 1794 (Part I); 1795 (Part II); 1807 (Part III)
Twenty Years at Hull-House (Late)
Jane Addams · 1910
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Late)
Shunryu Suzuki (Suzuki-rōshi) · 1970
Laudato Si' (Late)
Pope Francis · 2015 (24 May)
Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot) (Mid)
Samuel Beckett · 1948-49 (composed); 1952 (French publication); 1953 (premiere)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) (Mid)
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967
The Philosophy of Space and Time (Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre) (Mid)
Hans Reichenbach · 1928
Relativity: The Special and General Theory (Mid)
Albert Einstein · 1916 (German); 1920 (English)
The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Mid)
W.H. Auden · 1944-46 (composed); 1947 (published)
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Late)
Pema Chödrön (Deirdre Blomfield-Brown) · 1997
The Language Instinct (Late)
Steven Pinker · 1994
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Mid)
Erving Goffman · 1959
The Life of the Mind (Late)
Hannah Arendt · 1977-78 (Vol I Thinking; Vol II Willing; Vol III Judging unfinished at her death)
A Brief History of Time (Late)
Stephen Hawking · 1988
Full Catastrophe Living (Late)
Jon Kabat-Zinn · 1990 (revised 2013)
The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (Mid)
Viktor Frankl · 1946
On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Late)
David Ricardo · 1817
Iggeret Teiman (Epistle to Yemen, c. 1172) and the responsa (Middle (between the Commentary on the Mishnah, 1168, and the Mishneh Torah, completed 1178))
Moses Maimonides (Rambam) · c. 1172
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (Mature (composed at the height of the developing controversy with Rome))
Galileo Galilei · 1615 (composed; circulated in manuscript; first published 1636 in Strasbourg)
Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (Early (Spinoza's first published work))
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza · 1663 (Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I et II, Amsterdam: Rieuwertsz)
Historia Animalium (Mature)
Aristotle · c. 343-340 BC (composed during Aristotle's Lesbos period and continued at the Lyceum)
Religion and Science (Mid-mature)
Albert Einstein · 1930 (published New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930)
Letter to Herodotus (Mature)
Epicurus · c. 300 BC
Personas with Critical Realism as a declared influence
How Critical Realism resolves each dilemma
56 resolved positions across 4 dimensions · 1 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Do you really choose?
The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it.
69%
Are addicts responsible for their addiction?
The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real.
69%
Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do?
An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible.
69%
How much weight do future people deserve?
Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much.
47%
Is regret rational?
The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing.
47%
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them?
Extinct species are as real as we are; they have standing.
47%
Is the universe running out of usable energy?
Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing.
47%
Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so?
Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time.
47%
Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide?
Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide.
47%
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is the world created from nothing?
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance.
56%
Is the physical world fully real?
Yes — the physical world is fully real, mind-independent, persisting.
56%
Does matter have intrinsic moral standing?
Matter is morally considerable insofar as it is created or conserved good.
56%
What is money?
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features.
55%
What is a nation?
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character.
55%
What makes someone male or female?
Sex is a real biological kind with given content.
55%
Should we edit the human germline?
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given.
55%
Observer · 37 dilemmas, all mainstream
Could causation work backwards?
Causation runs one way — the arrow of time is real and structural.
68%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
The asymmetry is real because time itself has a real direction.
68%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
The arrow is real and structural; the asymmetry isn't an artifact of description.
68%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
Damage is real and permanent on the relevant timescales. There is no recovery; there is only limitation.
66%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
Civilizational complexity is hard to build and easy to lose; recovery is at best partial.
66%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
Entropy is what time is. The moral weight, if any, is the weight of working against the current.
66%
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Truth is mind-independent, universal, accessible in principle to all.
66%
When does a person begin?
A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence.
55%
What is marriage?
Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make.
55%
What is our place in nature?
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform.
50%
Should we colonize space?
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship.
50%
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Genetic modification is cultivation by other means.
50%
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Moral obligation tracks the relations one is in; distance does matter, structurally.
50%
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
Prayer changes the pray-er, not the prayed-for.
47%
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
Coincidence is exactly what the math says it is. The pattern is in the noticer.
47%
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
The observer is in time; foreknowledge across times raises real freedom problems.
46%
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
Meditators are bounded observers reporting unusual brain states; the 'timeless' is metaphorical.
46%
Does prayer change God's mind?
If there is an addressee at all, it is in time; prayer is communication, and may genuinely change what comes next.
46%
Are the dead morally present to the living?
Observers are bounded by their own moment, and no further agency makes the dead present.
43%
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
The category does not apply — the school is non-religious.
42%
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
The discrete person is the moral primary.
38%
What makes someone the same person over time?
You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity.
36%
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Same body, same person — even when the cognitive pattern has changed.
36%
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
Different body, different person — you died in the scanner.
36%
Is reality fundamentally digital?
No — continuous fields, classical limits, analog deep structure.
36%
Are there indivisible units of experience?
No — continuous Jamesian stream, phenomenological lived time.
36%
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Reconstructed — continuous re-narrating, no fixed engrams.
36%
Does history have a direction or meaning?
History is not where the deepest truth lives.
36%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
Animal minds are real because biology is the substrate of mind.
31%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
Brain tissue can in principle do what brains do; the question is integration.
31%
What happens to "you" when you die?
Death is genuinely the end.
29%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
No — mind is what a biological brain does, and an LLM has no brain.
29%
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Through controlled empirical investigation.
17%
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Trust the method, not the institutions or the persons — and remain wary.
8%
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
Revelation is not knowledge in the descriptive-empirical sense.
8%
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
An LLM produces tokens; calling that 'knowledge' is a measurement choice.
8%
Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal?
—
—
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone.
50%
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys.
50%
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible.
50%
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away.
50%
Jump to school (208)
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
#10
#11
#12
#13
#14
#15
#16
#17
#18
#19
#20
#21
#22
#23
#24
#25
#26
#27
#28
#29
#30
#31
#32
#33
#34
#35
#36
#37
#38
#39
#40
#41
#42
#43
#44
#45
#46
#47
#48
#49
#50
#51
#52
#53
#54
#55
#56
#57
#58
#59
#60
#61
#62
#63
#64
#65
#66
#67
#68
#69
#70
#71
#72
#73
#74
#75
#76
#77
#78
#79
#80
#81
#82
#83
#84
#85
#86
#87
#88
#89
#90
#91
#92
#93
#94
#95
#96
#97
#98
#99
#100
#101
#102
#103
#104
#105
#106
#107
#108
#109
#110
#111
#112
#113
#114
#115
#116
#117
#118
#119
#120
#121
#122
#123
#124
#125
#126
#127
#128
#129
#130
#131
#132
#133
#134
#135
#136
#137
#138
#139
#140
#141
#142
#143
#144
#145
#146
#147
#148
#149
#150
#151
#152
#153
#154
#155
#156
#157
#158
#159
#160
#161
#162
#163
#164
#165
#166
#167
#168
#169
#170
#171
#172
#173
#174
#175
#176
#177
#178
#179
#180
#181
#182
#183
#184
#185
#186
#187
#188
#189
#190
#191
#192
#193
#194
#195
#196
#197
#198
#199
#200
#201
#202
#203
#204
#205
#206
#207
#208