New Realism (redirected from Nouveau Réalisme)

New Realism

Early 20th-century movement in metaphysics and epistemology that opposed the idealism dominant in British and U.S. universities. Early leaders included William James, Bertrand Russell, and G. E. Moore, who adopted the term realism to signal their opposition to idealism. In 1910 William Pepperel Montague, Ralph Barton Perry, and others signed an article entitled “The Program and First Platform of Six Realists,” and followed it with a cooperative volume, The New Realism (1912). In defending the independence of known things, New Realism affirmed that in cognition “the content of knowledge, that which lies in or before the mind when knowledge takes place, is numerically identical with the thing known” (a form of direct realism). To some realists, this epistemological monism seemed unable to give a satisfactory explanation of the mind's proneness to error.

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New Realism 

a trend in contemporary bourgeois philosophy. New realism was influenced by the Scottish school as well as by F. Brentano, A. Meinong, E. Mach (Austria), and the early B. Russell.

The epistemological tenets of new realism were set forth by G. E. Moore in his article “The Refutation of Idealism” (1903) and were subsequently formulated into a specific doctrine in the United States by R. Perry, E. B. Holt, W. Montague, W. Marvin, E. Spaulding, and W. Pitkin, who in 1910 issued “The Program and First Platform of Six Realists.”

The cosmology of new realism was developed by S. Alexander, A. Whitehead, J. Smuts, and L. Morgan. It represented a variant of the metaphysical concept of development—the theory of emergent evolution. In the 1930’s, new realism declined in influence and was replaced by critical realism.

New realism criticized subjective idealism for reducing reality to the consciousness of the subject and rejected absolute idealism (F. Bradley), which identified reality with universal consciousness. New realism asserted the existence of object independent of subject. At the same time, it rejected materialism as a “dualistic” theory that supposedly regarded subject and object as absolute opposites. New realism developed the doctrine of epistemological monism.

New realism holds that the nature of being is neither material nor ideal. It is an aggregate of neutral elements that, depending on the situation, acquire either physical or mental significance. In cognition, the neutral object directly enters the consciousness of the subject, thereby becoming “mental.” However, when the object is not included in an epistemological situation, it appears as “physical.” However, the thesis of the direct inclusion of an object by consciousness does not make it possible to resolve the problem of the origin of false consciousness and contradicts the basic premise of new realism—the existence of reality independent of consciousness. Thus, new realism is essentially a variety of idealism.

REFERENCES

Bogomolov, A. S. Filosofiia anglo-amerikanskogo neorealizma. Moscow, 1962.
Lukanov, D. M. Gnoseologiia amerikanskogo “realizma.” Moscow, 1968.
Sovremennaia burzhuaznaia filosofiia. Moscow, 1972. Chapter 8.
The New Realism. New York, 1925.
Kremer, R. Le Néo-réalisme américain. Paris, 1920.
Evans, D. L. New Realism and Old Reality. Princeton, 1928.
Ray, B. Consciousness in Neo-realism. Oxford, 1935.
Boman, L. Criticism and Construction in the Philosophy of American New Realism. Stockholm, 1955. D. M. LUKANOV