Critical Realism in 20th-Century Philosophy

1. Introduction

The Critical Realism Period in 20th‑century philosophy designates a cluster of realist movements that sought to defend the existence of a mind‑independent world while taking seriously the mediating roles of perception, language, history, and culture. It emerged in the early decades of the century as philosophers in the United States, Britain, and several European countries attempted to move beyond both Absolute Idealism and naive realism, as well as to respond to new forms of empiricism and positivism.

Rather than forming a single unified school, critical realism in this period consisted of overlapping projects:

• In the Anglo‑American context, self‑described “American Critical Realists” and their British allies articulated realist responses to idealism and sense‑data theories, often drawing on evolutionary naturalism and early analytic methods.
• On the Continent, figures associated with critical ontology and realist phenomenology developed stratified accounts of reality and value, in dialogue with neo‑Kantianism and Husserlian phenomenology.
• Across these contexts, philosophers reflected on the implications of modern science, especially relativity and early quantum theory, for metaphysics and epistemology.

Despite their diversity, these strands shared several guiding commitments: that reality does not depend on being perceived or conceived; that all knowledge is fallible and theory‑laden; and that philosophical critique should clarify, not abolish, claims to truth and objectivity. Critical realists typically rejected both the foundationalist search for indubitable starting points and the skeptical conclusion that nothing can be known, exploring instead intermediate positions that combine realism about the world with critical scrutiny of our access to it.

This entry surveys the period as a distinct historical configuration, tracing its chronological boundaries, social and intellectual context, main problematics, regional variants, and subsequent legacy within 20th‑century philosophy.

2. Chronological Boundaries and Periodization

Historians commonly treat critical realism as a distinct early‑ to mid‑20th‑century formation, though its boundaries are somewhat porous. The period is often dated from roughly 1900 to 1960, bracketed by the decline of 19th‑century idealism and the rise of postwar analytic metaphysics and scientific realism.

2.1 Start of the Period

The formative phase is usually placed between 1900 and World War I. Several markers are frequently cited:

Some scholars emphasize continuities with late 19th‑century neo‑Kantianism and scientific materialism, proposing earlier starting points. Others argue that critical realism should only be dated from the explicitly collective American Critical Realist publications around 1920.

2.2 High Point and Consolidation

The interwar years (c. 1919–1939) are widely regarded as the period’s high point. During this time:

• American critical realists published collective manifestos and monographs.
• British realists and early analytic philosophers developed cognate positions on perception and knowledge.
• Continental thinkers such as Nicolai Hartmann systematized critical ontologies and realist phenomenologies.

These developments lent the period its distinctive profile as a cross‑regional attempt to secure a critically examined realism.

2.3 End of the Period

The end point is more contested. Many accounts place it around 1960, when:

Alternative periodizations treat “critical realism” as continuing beyond 1960, especially in theology and social theory, but most historians distinguish the early‑20th‑century configuration from these later revivals, such as Bhaskar’s social‑scientific critical realism.

3. Historical Context

Critical realism developed amid profound social, institutional, and intellectual transformations in the first half of the 20th century.

3.1 Political and Social Upheavals

The period was shaped by industrialization, mass democracy, and the trauma of World War I and II. These events raised doubts about narratives of linear progress and rational control, intensifying philosophical concern with crisis, irrationality, and the stability of knowledge. Realist philosophers often interpreted these crises as revealing the limits of purely idealist or subjectivist accounts of culture and history, yet they also highlighted the fallibility of established beliefs.

3.2 Transformation of Universities and Professions

Universities in the United States and Europe underwent rapid professionalization. In the Anglophone world, the waning of British Idealism coincided with the establishment of philosophy as a specialized research discipline. Departments increasingly adopted scientific and analytic self‑conceptions, providing a fertile environment for realist positions that aligned themselves with empirical science while rejecting crude materialism.

3.3 Scientific and Intellectual Milieu

New scientific theories—Einstein’s relativity, the early quantum theory, advances in biology, and experimental psychology—challenged traditional metaphysical ideas of space, time, and causality. Philosophers debated whether these developments undermined classical realism or called for its reconstruction. Critical realists typically sought to reconcile a robust realism with recognition of theory change and conceptual revision.

Simultaneously, movements such as neo‑Kantianism, phenomenology, and pragmatism reoriented philosophy toward cognition, meaning, and lived experience. Critical realism interacted with these currents: it absorbed neo‑Kantian insights about conceptual mediation, engaged phenomenology’s descriptive rigor, and responded to pragmatist accounts of truth and inquiry.

3.4 Cultural and Artistic Modernism

Modernist literature and art, along with sociological theories of ideology and culture, fostered skepticism toward “immediate” appearances and common sense. Critical realists often treated such cultural forms as evidence that human access to reality is historically and symbolically mediated, while still resisting relativist conclusions. The resulting outlook combined cultural self‑critique with an insistence on the possibility of objective knowledge.

3.5 Religion and Secularization

Processes of secularization and debates over science and religion formed another backdrop. Many critical realists sought to articulate a vantage point that would neither abandon religious traditions nor insulate them from rational scrutiny. This mediating stance influenced both the content and the reception of critical realist proposals in several intellectual communities.

4. The Zeitgeist of Critical Realism

The zeitgeist of the Critical Realism Period can be characterized as an attempt to secure objectivity in an age acutely aware of mediation, fallibility, and historical contingency.

4.1 Between Dogmatic Realism and Skepticism

Philosophers increasingly rejected both:

• Naive realism, which takes perceptual appearances as straightforwardly revealing the world “as it is,” and
• Global skepticism or radical idealism, which seemed to undermine the very notion of a mind‑independent reality.

Critical realists sought intermediate positions, arguing that we can know an independent world, but only through conceptually structured and fallible practices of inquiry.

4.2 Science as Model and Problem

Science occupied an ambivalent status:

The prevailing mood favored realism about scientific entities and structures, tempered by recognition that theories evolve and sometimes overturn prior ontologies.

4.3 Critique of Consciousness and Language

The period was marked by doubts about uncritical introspection and ordinary language as transparent guides to reality. Movements like phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and psychology emphasized the complexity of cognition and expression. Critical realists shared the suspicion of immediate self‑givenness while resisting accounts that reduce the world to linguistic or mental constructions.

4.4 Historicity and Cultural Mediation

Another widespread sensibility emphasized the historicity of knowledge. Influenced by historicist thought, sociology, and cultural criticism, philosophers treated beliefs as embedded in traditions and social practices. Critical realists acknowledged this, yet maintained that historically situated knowers can progressively approximate truths about a world that does not itself depend on those histories.

4.5 Negotiating Value and Meaning

There was pervasive anxiety about value in a scientific age—seen in debates over moral relativism, aesthetic modernism, and the erosion of religious authority. Critical realists often responded with value realism or non‑reductive accounts of persons and social structures, claiming that the objective world includes irreducible normative and cultural dimensions.

Overall, the zeitgeist combined confidence in science and rational inquiry with a critical self‑consciousness about their limits and presuppositions, fostering the “critical” component of critical realism.

5. Central Philosophical Problems

Critical realists addressed a set of interconnected problems that structured debates across regional and methodological boundaries.

5.1 Status of Mind‑Independent Reality

The foundational issue concerned whether and how a mind‑independent reality could be affirmed after the critiques of idealism and empiricism. Critical realists typically argued that:

• The existence of such a reality is a precondition for coherent experience and scientific practice.
• Yet its nature is not transparently known; it is approached via conceptual schemes, models, and partial perspectives.

Disagreements centered on how strongly this independence should be construed and how to argue for it without circularity.

5.2 Perception, Representation, and Sense‑Data

A second cluster of problems involved perception:

Some critical realists accepted modified sense‑data analyses, others moved toward direct realism with a critical account of perceptual processing.

5.3 Truth, Reference, and Scientific Theories

The rise of abstract scientific theories raised questions about:

• The reality of theoretical entities (electrons, fields, spacetime curvature).
• The nature of truth (correspondence vs. more pragmatic or structural accounts).
• The reference of theoretical terms across theory change.

Critical realists generally favored referential realism and correspondence‑style conceptions of truth, but often reconceived them in structural or fallibilist terms.

5.4 Critique of Knowledge and Fallibilism

In light of historical shifts in science and culture, the problem of fallibilism became central. Critical realists argued that:

• No belief is absolutely immune to revision.
• Yet this fallibility does not entail epistemic relativism; it is compatible with objective truth.

They explored criteria for warrant and rational belief that do not rely on infallible foundations.

5.5 Values, Persons, and Social Reality

Finally, critical realists debated whether values, persons, and social structures are real in ways comparable to physical entities. Many proposed stratified ontologies with emergent levels (physical, biological, mental, social), each with its own kinds of properties and causal powers.

Different strands emphasized different domains—ethics, aesthetics, law, or social theory—but shared the view that human and social realities are neither mere projections nor reducible to physical descriptions.

6. American Critical Realism

American Critical Realism emerged in the early 20th century as a coordinated movement among U.S. philosophers seeking an alternative to both Absolute Idealism and naive realism. It is most clearly represented by the collaborative volume Essays in Critical Realism (1920) and by individual works of figures such as Roy Wood Sellars, George Santayana, Arthur O. Lovejoy, Durant Drake, James B. Pratt, C. A. Strong, and Morris R. Cohen.

6.1 Core Theses

American critical realists typically advanced three interconnected claims:

1. Existence of an independent physical world: External objects exist and possess many of the properties attributed to them by mature science, regardless of whether they are perceived.
2. Mediated knowledge: Perception and thought do not reveal objects directly as they are; instead, cognition operates through “essences,” “characters,” or “datum‑contents” that are distinct from but related to external things.
3. Fallibilist but progressive science: Scientific inquiry is historically situated and corrigible, yet it can achieve increasingly adequate models of reality.

6.2 Variants within the Movement

There were significant internal differences:

Some authors accepted a version of sense‑data theory, construing data as non‑mental “characters” that mediate cognition; others sought to avoid mental intermediaries. Proponents nonetheless regarded these disagreements as compatible with a shared commitment to critical realism.

6.3 Methodological Orientation

American critical realists blended:

• Respect for experimental science and evolutionary theory.
• Analytical attention to conceptual distinctions (e.g., between existence and essence).
• Engagement with pragmatism and idealism, often criticizing each for perceived excesses of conventionalism or subjectivism.

Their work helped reorient U.S. philosophy toward a scientifically informed yet metaphysically explicit realism, influencing later generations even as the explicit label “critical realism” waned.

7. British and Anglophone Realist Currents

In the British and wider Anglophone context, critical realism did not always appear under that explicit name, but a range of realist currents shared many of its central concerns and contributed to the broader period.

7.1 Reaction against British Idealism

By the early 20th century, philosophers such as G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell famously challenged British Idealism. Alongside them, figures in the Oxford “Cook Wilson school”—notably John Cook Wilson and his students, including H. A. Prichard—advanced a robust realism about objects and truths.

These thinkers insisted that:

• Knowing is a relation to independently existing facts or objects.
• Idealist analyses that treat reality as dependent on thought are misconceived.

Though they did not always emphasize mediation as explicitly as American critical realists, their work provided a backdrop for more “critical” realist positions.

7.2 C. D. Broad and Analytic Realism

C. D. Broad is often regarded as a key bridge figure. In The Mind and Its Place in Nature and other works, he:

• Offered detailed analyses of perception, causation, and the mind–body relation, acknowledging sense‑data while defending realism about external objects.
• Explored multiple metaphysical possibilities (e.g., emergentism, dualism, panpsychism) without dogmatically endorsing one, reflecting a cautious, critical realism.

Broad’s systematic, analytic style aligned realist metaphysics with emerging analytic philosophy, influencing later debates in philosophy of mind and science.

7.3 Varieties of Anglophone Realism

Beyond England, other Anglophone philosophers developed related currents:

Some British philosophers maintained more direct realist views, downplaying sense‑data and emphasizing the transparency of perception; others integrated Kantian or phenomenological insights, moving closer to explicitly critical realist positions.

7.4 Relation to Early Analytic Philosophy

These realist currents intersected with the rise of early analytic philosophy:

• Attention to logic and language supported precise articulation of realist theses about facts, propositions, and reference.
• Engagement with verificationism and later ordinary language philosophy led some realists to refine or soften metaphysical claims, while others maintained a more robust ontology.

The British and Anglophone realist strands thus contributed crucial resources—especially in logic, philosophy of mind, and epistemology—to the broader critical realist project, even when the self‑description “critical realist” was not consistently employed.

8. Continental and Phenomenological Realisms

On the European Continent, several realist movements developed in interaction with neo‑Kantianism and phenomenology, giving the Critical Realism Period a distinctively ontological and descriptive dimension.

8.1 Critical Ontology and Nicolai Hartmann

Nicolai Hartmann is commonly regarded as a central figure in Continental critical realism. His “critical ontology” proposes:

• A stratified reality with distinct levels—physical, organic, psychic, and spiritual—each with its own categories and laws.
• A critique of both naive realism and transcendental idealism, arguing that human cognition is partial and conditioned yet oriented toward a structured, independent world.
• Emphasis on the autonomy of values and cultural formations, which are real but irreducible to natural processes.

Hartmann’s approach drew on, but revised, Kantian themes, treating the categories not as fixed forms of the subject but as discoverable structures of being.

8.2 Realist Phenomenology

Within the broader phenomenological movement, several thinkers pursued realist directions:

These phenomenologists insisted that intentional consciousness is directed toward genuinely independent objects and structures, not merely toward correlates constituted by transcendental subjectivity. Their detailed descriptive analyses supported a non‑reductive realism about persons, values, and social entities.

8.3 Neo‑Kantian and Other Realisms

Some neo‑Kantian philosophers also moved toward more realist positions, emphasizing:

• The objectivity of scientific laws and structures (e.g., in Marburg and Greifswald circles).
• The possibility of a critical metaphysics grounded in scientific practice rather than speculative system‑building.

Other Continental strands, including certain Catholic and Protestant philosophical traditions, aligned themselves with critical realist themes when resisting both materialism and subjectivism.

8.4 Relation to Husserlian Phenomenology and Existentialism

Realist phenomenologists and critical ontologists engaged intensively with Husserl:

• Early on, many shared his descriptive method and commitment to rigorous intuition of essences.
• As Husserl’s work took a more transcendental‑idealist turn, they increasingly criticized what they saw as an overemphasis on constitution by consciousness.

Later, existential phenomenology and Heideggerian ontology sometimes portrayed these realist projects as insufficiently radical in their critique of metaphysics, contributing to their relative marginalization after World War II, even as their ideas continued to influence value theory and social ontology.

9. Metaphysics and Stratified Ontology

Critical realist metaphysics typically abandoned the search for a single, undifferentiated “substance” in favor of layered or stratified accounts of reality, while affirming that these layers concern a world independent of human cognition.

9.1 Levels of Reality

Many critical realists distinguished between at least four broad levels:

Proponents such as Hartmann argued that higher levels are ontologically dependent upon, but not reducible to, lower levels, possessing their own categories and laws.

9.2 Emergence and Non‑Reduction

A key metaphysical issue was the notion of emergence:

• Some critical realists treated emergent properties as novel causal powers that arise when lower‑level entities are organized in complex ways (e.g., consciousness emerging from neural processes).
• Others interpreted emergence more modestly, as the appearance of new descriptive frameworks without distinct causal powers.

Debates centered on whether emergent levels require additional ontological commitments (e.g., non‑physical mental substances) or can be integrated into a broadly naturalistic picture.

9.3 Causality and Powers

Critical realists often rejected purely Humean accounts of causation as mere regular succession. Instead, they leaned toward:

• Realist views of causal powers: entities possess dispositions or capacities that ground observed regularities.
• Layer‑specific conceptions of causation: e.g., reasons as causes in the mental and social realms; norms as shaping action.

Not all thinkers agreed on the exact metaphysical status of powers, but many saw them as indispensable for explaining both scientific practice and everyday experience.

9.4 Ontology of Values and Persons

Metaphysical discussions extended to values and persons:

• Some advocated value realism, treating moral and aesthetic values as objective features or relations instantiated in the world.
• Others preferred cautious formulations, speaking of values as grounded in structural features of human life and interaction, yet resisting subjectivism.

Persons were often characterized as centers of agency and responsibility, irreducible to aggregates of physical or psychological states, and embedded within social and cultural structures.

9.5 Unity and Pluralism of Being

Finally, critical realists debated whether their stratified ontologies imply a pluralistic metaphysics (multiple kinds of being) or can be unified under overarching categories (such as process, structure, or system). Some leaned toward structural realism, claiming that what is ultimately shared across levels are relational structures, while the intrinsic nature of the underlying “stuff” remains elusive.

10. Epistemology, Perception, and Fallibilism

Critical realist epistemology is characterized by its attempt to reconcile realism about the world with sophisticated accounts of perception and knowledge that avoid infallibilism.

10.1 Mediated Perception

Perception was treated as both:

• World‑directed: experiences are intentionally about external objects and states of affairs.
• Mediated: this access is filtered through sensory processes, neural mechanisms, and conceptual schemes.

Different models were proposed:

Debates focused on how to account for illusion and hallucination without either abandoning realism or positing a problematic veil of ideas.

10.2 Knowledge as Fallible and Situated

Critical realists widely endorsed fallibilism:

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No belief or theory is in principle exempt from revision in light of further evidence or argument.

Yet they resisted the inference to relativism or skepticism, arguing that:

• Fallibility is a condition of inquiry and improvement, not a sign of futility.
• Cross‑checking among different methods, perspectives, and disciplines can converge on more adequate descriptions of reality.

Some drew analogies with scientific practice, where theories are always revisable but nonetheless aim at truth.

10.3 The Role of Concepts and Theory‑Ladenness

Critical realists anticipated later discussions of theory‑ladenness of observation:

• Observations are always made within conceptual frameworks and research traditions.
• Shifts in such frameworks can alter what is noticed, counted as evidence, or even seen as a possible object.

Rather than treating this as undermining objectivity, they typically held that multiple conceptual schemes can offer partial, complementary access to the same underlying reality.

10.4 Criteria of Justification

Epistemic justification, in critical realist accounts, often combined:

• Empirical adequacy and predictive success.
• Coherence with broader bodies of belief.
• Explanatory power and capacity to integrate disparate phenomena.

Some thinkers leaned toward naturalized epistemology, grounding these criteria in evolved cognitive capacities, while others stressed normative aspects of reasoning and evidence evaluation.

10.5 Self‑Knowledge and Reflexivity

Finally, several critical realists emphasized reflexivity: knowledge claims must take into account the conditions under which knowing subjects (individuals, cultures, scientific communities) operate. This reflexivity was not seen as self‑defeating, but as an additional dimension of critical scrutiny that strengthens, rather than weakens, epistemic claims.

11. Science, Theoretical Entities, and Structural Realism

The Critical Realism Period coincided with major advances in physics and other sciences, prompting intensive reflection on the status of scientific theories and unobservable entities.

11.1 Reality of Theoretical Entities

Critical realists generally defended the reality of entities posited by successful scientific theories, such as electrons, fields, or genes. They argued that:

• The explanatory and predictive success of theories provides indirect evidence for the existence of such entities.
• Scientific practice itself presupposes that we are tracking features of a world not of our making.

Opponents, including some instrumentalists and positivists, maintained that theoretical terms need only function as calculational devices. Critical realists replied that this underestimates the ontological commitments implicit in experimental and technological interventions.

11.2 Theory Change and Fallibilist Realism

The historical record of theory change raised worries: if past successful theories later proved false, why assume current theories are approximately true? Critical realists responded by:

• Emphasizing approximate truth: earlier theories may capture aspects or limits of later, more comprehensive frameworks.
• Distinguishing between core structures of a theory that survive change and more speculative additions that do not.

This supported a fallibilist realism, according to which science progresses through successive refinements that increasingly align with the world’s structure.

11.3 Structural Realist Tendencies

Some critical realists anticipated later structural realism, the view that what science most reliably grasps is structure rather than intrinsic nature. They suggested that:

• Mathematical relations and symmetries in physics (as in relativity or early quantum theory) reflect real structural features of the world.
• The underlying “substance” or intrinsic nature of entities may remain largely unknown.

Not all critical realists explicitly endorsed structural realism, but many adopted structuralist motifs, especially in response to abstract physical theories.

11.4 Science and Metaphysics

Critical realists debated the proper relationship between science and metaphysics:

• Some saw metaphysics as continuous with science, offering high‑level syntheses of scientific findings.
• Others treated metaphysics as prior in some respects, providing categories and ontological frameworks within which science operates.

They generally opposed both scientism (the claim that science exhausts all knowledge) and anti‑scientific metaphysics, advocating instead a mutually informing relation where metaphysical hypotheses remain answerable to scientific developments.

12. Values, Persons, and Social Reality

Beyond natural science, critical realists examined whether values, persons, and social structures are objectively real and how they relate to the physical world.

12.1 Value Realism

Many critical realists defended value realism, arguing that moral, aesthetic, and other values are not reducible to mere preferences or emotive responses. They maintained that:

• Values are discovered, not invented, through appropriate forms of experience and reflection.
• Evaluative properties often supervene on natural or structural features (e.g., “dangerous,” “courageous”), but possess an irreducible normative dimension.

Realist phenomenologists like Scheler and ontologists like Hartmann analyzed complex hierarchies of values, while Anglophone realists debated whether ethical facts can be known analogously to empirical facts.

12.2 Persons and Agency

Critical realists commonly viewed persons as:

• Ontologically significant: more than aggregates of physical states.
• Agents capable of reasons‑responsive action and moral responsibility.

Debates focused on whether personal identity and agency can be fully explicated in physicalist terms or require additional categories (e.g., spirit, self, or subject). Many opted for non‑reductive accounts, often aligned with emergentist metaphysics.

12.3 Social Structures and Institutions

The reality of social structures and institutions presented another key issue. Critical realists and realist phenomenologists of social acts (e.g., Reinach) argued that:

• Social entities such as laws, obligations, and institutions have a distinct mode of being, grounded in but not reducible to individual mental states.
• These entities can exert causal and normative influence—for example, a law can shape behavior and expectations.

Some developed detailed ontologies of collective intentionality, roles, and norms, anticipating later work in social ontology and sociology.

12.4 Interplay between Natural and Social Sciences

Critical realists considered how natural and social sciences differ and interact:

They often resisted both reductive naturalism (which treats social phenomena as nothing but physical processes) and strong relativism (which denies any objective social facts), advocating a stratified realism that recognizes distinctive kinds of social and normative reality.

12.5 Human Flourishing and Critique

Some critical realists linked value and social ontology to projects of critique and emancipation. While remaining realist about structures and constraints, they suggested that understanding the real conditions of social life can inform efforts to transform them—an idea later central to social‑scientific critical realism, which explicitly drew on this earlier period.

13. Major Figures and Intellectual Networks

The Critical Realism Period was sustained not only by individual thinkers but also by networks of collaboration, debate, and institutional affiliation across regions.

13.1 Key Figures by Region

13.2 Collaborative Projects and Journals

American critical realists cooperated closely:

• The volume Essays in Critical Realism functioned as a collective manifesto, articulating shared principles while showcasing individual variations.
• Many contributors interacted through American philosophical societies and journals, such as The Journal of Philosophy.

In Europe, exchanges occurred through:

• Phenomenological circles (e.g., Göttingen, Munich) connecting Reinach, Scheler, and Ingarden.
• German universities where Hartmann taught, influencing students and colleagues in philosophy and theology.

13.3 Cross‑Tradition Interactions

There were significant cross‑fertilizations:

• Hartmann’s work was read by both Continental and some Anglophone philosophers, contributing to the diffusion of stratified ontology and value realism.
• Roy Wood Sellars’s evolutionary naturalism influenced later analytic thinkers, including his son Wilfrid Sellars, who transformed critical realist themes into a more fully naturalized and linguistic framework.
• Karl Popper, though not a self‑identified critical realist, developed critical rationalism and a realist philosophy of science that shared family resemblances with critical realist concerns about fallibilism and objective knowledge.

13.4 Institutional and Disciplinary Locations

Critical realists were often situated in:

• Philosophy departments undergoing professionalization.
• Faculties of theology or religious studies, especially on the Continent and in the Anglophone world, where debates over science and religion were salient.
• Interdisciplinary settings involving law, sociology, and psychology (e.g., Reinach’s legal phenomenology, value theorists engaging with social sciences).

These institutional locations shaped the emphases of different figures—some leaning toward technical epistemology, others toward ethics, law, or theology—while maintaining shared realist and critical commitments.

14. Landmark Texts of the Critical Realism Period

Several works are widely regarded as landmark texts that crystallized or significantly advanced critical realist themes.

14.1 Representative Works

14.2 Themes Highlighted in Primary Texts

These works collectively address:

• The problem of knowledge and the critique of both idealism and naive realism.
• The relation between science and metaphysics, especially in light of evolutionary biology and modern physics.
• The ontology of mind, value, and culture, frequently via emergentist and stratified frameworks.

Primary sources often express their critical stance explicitly. For example, a typical formulation from the American collection (paraphrased) stresses that:

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Our knowledge is of a world that exists independently of being known, yet this knowledge is never unmediated; it is achieved through data and concepts that are distinct from the things they reveal.

Such texts became reference points not only for contemporaries but also for later historians and philosophers reassessing realist options in the 20th century.

15. Relations to Religion and Theology

Critical realism interacted in complex ways with religious belief and theological reflection, particularly in contexts where science–religion tensions were prominent.

15.1 Mediating Position between Naturalism and Theism

Many critical realists occupied intermediate positions:

• They rejected fideism—the view that religious belief is insulated from rational scrutiny.
• They also resisted reductionist naturalism that treated religion as mere illusion, projection, or by‑product.

Instead, they proposed that religious claims aim at truths about a transcendent reality, while acknowledging that such claims are symbolically mediated and historically conditioned.

15.2 Theological Appropriations of Critical Realism

In various Christian traditions, elements of critical realism were incorporated into theological projects:

These appropriations paved the way for later, more explicit religious critical realism in mid‑ to late 20th‑century theology, although the early period itself often remained cautious about labels.

15.3 Science–Faith Dialogues

Critical realists contributed to discussions of science and religion by:

• Affirming the autonomy of scientific inquiry and the reality of the natural order.
• Interpreting religious claims as concerning different levels or aspects of reality (e.g., meaning, value, ultimate dependence) rather than competing causal explanations.

Some thinkers advocated a form of complementarity: scientific and religious discourses address the same reality under distinct modes, each subject to its own critical standards.

15.4 Epistemic Humility and Revelation

The emphasis on fallibilism and mediation shaped views of revelation and scriptural interpretation:

• Doctrines were seen as contextual articulations of encounters with the divine, open to reinterpretation in light of new knowledge.
• This stance allowed for both commitment to religious truth claims and openness to revision and dialogue.

Critics, however, sometimes regarded such positions as either too concessive to secular critique or insufficiently radical in their rethinking of traditional dogma. Nonetheless, the interplay between critical realism and theology became an important strand in the period’s intellectual landscape, especially in Europe and the Anglophone world.

16. Transition to Postwar Realist Movements

By the mid‑20th century, the explicit critical realism movement began to wane, but many of its themes were transformed and absorbed into emerging philosophical currents.

16.1 Impact of Logical Empiricism and Ordinary Language Philosophy

The rise of logical empiricism and later ordinary language philosophy reshaped philosophical agendas, particularly in the Anglophone world:

Some critical realists adapted, translating their concerns into semantic or methodological terms; others remained more traditional and lost influence.

16.2 Emergence of Scientific Realism and Critical Rationalism

In the postwar period, scientific realism and critical rationalism emerged as influential movements, often echoing critical realist ideas:

• Scientific realists argued for the truth or approximate truth of successful scientific theories and the reality of unobservables, issues long central to critical realism.
• Karl Popper’s critical rationalism shared the combination of fallibilism and realism about truth, though framed within a distinct philosophy of science focused on falsifiability.

These newer movements sometimes acknowledged debts to earlier realists; in other cases, continuities remained implicit, recognized mainly by historians.

16.3 Wilfrid Sellars and Naturalized Critical Realism

Wilfrid Sellars, influenced by his father Roy Wood Sellars, transformed critical realist themes within a more thoroughly naturalistic and linguistic framework:

• He criticized the “Myth of the Given”, challenging sense‑data accounts while preserving a realist orientation.
• He developed a picture of knowledge as situated within the space of reasons, integrating normative and naturalistic dimensions.

Many commentators regard him as a pivotal figure in moving from classical critical realism to late‑20th‑century analytic metaphysics and philosophy of mind.

16.4 Diffusion into Theology and Social Theory

Critical realist notions of stratified reality, fallibilist knowledge, and the reality of social structures influenced:

• Mid‑20th‑century theology, where thinkers drew on critical realism to articulate post‑positivist accounts of faith and doctrine.
• Later social‑scientific critical realism (notably in Roy Bhaskar’s work), which explicitly revived the term “critical realism” while reworking it in Marxian and social‑theoretical directions.

Thus, the transition period involved both eclipse—as the explicit label fell out of fashionable use—and diffusion, as core ideas were rearticulated within new theoretical frameworks.

17. Legacy and Historical Significance

Retrospectively, the Critical Realism Period is increasingly seen as a crucial bridge between 19th‑century philosophies of consciousness and late‑20th‑century realist metaphysics and philosophy of science.

17.1 Contributions to Metaphysics and Epistemology

Critical realists bequeathed several enduring ideas:

• Fallibilist realism: the view that knowledge is historically conditioned yet capable of truth about a mind‑independent world.
• Stratified ontology: multi‑level accounts of reality that accommodate emergence, values, and social structures alongside physical processes.
• Mediated perception and theory‑ladenness: recognition that all access to reality is conceptually and perceptually filtered, a theme prominent in later philosophy of science and mind.

These ideas informed subsequent debates about emergentism, non‑reductive physicalism, and the realism–antirealism controversy.

17.2 Influence on Philosophy of Science and Social Theory

In philosophy of science, critical realist themes anticipated:

• Arguments for scientific realism and entity realism.
• Structural realist responses to theory change.
• Emphasis on the role of models, idealizations, and practices in mediating knowledge of the world.

In social theory, later critical realists such as Bhaskar developed sophisticated accounts of social structures and causal powers, explicitly drawing on earlier stratified ontologies and critiques of positivism.

17.3 Role in Theology and Philosophy of Religion

The period also shaped religious critical realism:

• Providing conceptual resources for articulating faith as cognitively contentful yet fallible.
• Encouraging integration of theological claims with scientific and historical knowledge.

Such positions influenced mid‑ and late‑20th‑century discussions of revelation, miracles, and religious language.

17.4 Historiographical Reassessment

Recent scholarship has moved away from viewing critical realism as a marginal or failed school, instead highlighting:

By foregrounding both continuities and transformations, historians now treat the Critical Realism Period as a key chapter in the 20th‑century effort to think realism under conditions of modern scientific and cultural self‑critique.