Critical Realism - Roy Bhaskar

Ram Roy Bhaskar was a British philosopher best known as the initiator of the philosophical movement of critical realism. He was a World Scholar at the Institute of Education, University College London

[adamu]

A great mind is now gone. RIP Roy Bhaskar. May your followers stand on your shoulders.

[javedahmedmalik]

Will always be indebted to him to help me understand the reality as it is and how it is perceived in social sciences and in life. RIP Sir. Salute.

[chris.dalton]

Roy was kind to let me sit in on a number of his seminars at IoE while I was doing my PhD research about 7 or 8 years ago. This is how he spoke, always with gentility and softness, always with carefully chosen words, always without starting with the idea that the audience needed to have things explained to them in a way that dumbed things down, and always in terms of stating and restating (in slightly different terms) the same things. He tended to lose people along the way, often at the point where he got beyond the critique of science and the epistemic fallacy and into the labyrinthine descriptions of ontology and so on. By the time he tried to explain meta-reality, I doubt anyone could really follow him, and if they could they may not have quite agreed. I think CR is probably now doomed to be an item on the menu for master's and doctoral students possible philosophical perspectives to select their approach, and maybe by some others who arrived in this man's wake from social science and other critical approaches with roots in Marxism and metaphors of justice and power. This is a shame, because he was really on to something with the search for a coherent path from ontology to epistemology to axiology. But he really was a lovely guy, who held court with style despite some serious physical conditions.

[ottolaske]

What moves one over and over about Roy Bhaskar is his modesty. He even understanded his huge contribution to the resuscitation of dialectical thinking which is of enormous value for addressing the crisis of four-planar being. To show how true this is he left to others. I am forever grateful to Roy to have shown me the promises of dialogical thinking based on dialectic. Otto Laske, creator of the Constructive Developmental Framework, an epistemological equivalent of dialectical ontology. March 2017.

[rossleadbetter]

Fantastic! Viewing reality as stratified allows us to see what underlies each, deeper ontological layer; therefore, the reality we currently have / see / experience is the result deeper and deeper layers that can be understood, and even influenced. Its like knowing that a change in the direction of a stream, upstream will make a change in the flow downstream...except opposite that we work with 'deeper' and 'superficial' as the boundaries of the CR stratification... it makes a difference!

[socratesagain]

To my eternal shame, I just "discovered" Mr. Bhaskar last night while researching a topic on epistemological thinking and the human brain's "need" (ability?) to create constructs in order to understand ("dissect?" But mine is such a morbid term...) _underlying reality_ which may land us on the deterministic side if not understood and mastered. The man beat me to the punch DECADES back! I must now credit his views when I complete my project. Sure wish I had met him in his prime. My god, what a mind!Be well.

[ljwljw]

Such sharp intelligence and crystal-clear mind.A true lost

[ged]

Thanks for this - very enlightning talk by someone sure of their subject.

[joziemc]

Very interesting I'm sure - too clever for me though :(

[jshir]

I remember my Christian college taught me "critical 'realism'" which denied that there were any facts or that words have any meaning which therefore implies that there is no truth or morality

[lastcall]

I wish I would have heard this lecture during Philosophy 201! Excellent. I pray that in all his getting of knowledge that he came to the knowledge of the truth in Jesus Christ before he left this world. Jesus IS the way, the truth and the life. No man can come unto the Father except through Him. Jesus is the Door. Today, if you hear His voice-- come.

[davidmurray]

Jabba The Hut inhabited by the spirit of an English upper-class puff, giving back to Common Sense its own banality tarted up with academese and spiced with mystical mumbojumbo.