Reflections on meta-Reality is now widely regarded as a landmark in contemporary philosophy. It initiates the philosophy of meta-Reality, the third main phase of Roy Bhaskar’s philosophical thoughts, after original or basic critical realism and dialectical critical realism. Originally published in 2002 and based on talks given in India, Europe and America, Roy Bhaskar presents his new philosophy of meta-Reality as a radical extension, systematic development and proleptic completion of critical realism. This brilliant series of studies contains seminal and far-reaching discussions of critical realism and the nature of being; an incisive and limpid account of modernity, modernism and post-modernism; a sublime discourse on the nature of the self and compelling considerations on the relationship between social science and self-realization. Together, they demonstrate the ubiquity of transcendental phenomena in everyday life and the orientation of enlightenment towards collective human emancipation and universal self-realization. A new introduction to this edition by Mervyn Hartwig, founding editor of The Journal of Critical Realism and editor of A Dictionary of Critical Realism (Routledge, 2007), describes the context, significance and impact of Reflections on meta-Reality, and supplies an expert guide to its content. This book is essential reading for students and practitioners in both philosophy and the human sciences.

The Contradictions of Love: Towards a feminist-realist ontology of sociosexuality offers a robust and multifaceted theoretical account of how, in contemporary western societies, women continue to be subordinated to men through sexual love. The book defends and elaborates Anna G. Jónasdóttir’s thesis that men tend to exploit women of their ‘love power’, by means of an innovative application of critical realism, dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality. Gunnarsson also offers a critique of the state of affairs of contemporary feminist theory. The author demonstrates that the meta-theoretical framework of critical realism offers the tools that can counter the poststructuralist hegemony still prevailing in feminist theory. On a general level, The Contradictions of Love attempts at reconciling theoretical positions which tend to appear in opposition to one another. In particular, it offers a way of bridging the gap between the notion of love as a locus of exploitation and that of love as a force which can conquer oppression. This book is a unique and timely contribution in the field of feminist theory, in that it offers the first elaborate assessment and development of Jónasdóttir’s important but relatively sidestepped work, and in that it counters poststructuralist trends from the point of view of a robust critical realist framework that has hitherto been spectacularly absent in feminist theory, although it offers solutions to metatheoretical problems at the forefront of feminist debates; in the field of critical realism broadly defined, in that it elaborates on crucial ontological themes of (dialectical) critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality via a discussion of the issues of love, sexuality, gender and power; and finally, in the field of love studies, in that it offers a sophisticated account of how gender asymmetries prevail in love despite norms of gender equality and reciprocity, and in that it reconciles feminist, conflict-oriented perspectives on love with notions of love as transcending conflict.

This book offers a critical realist intervention into the field of Marxist Sociology of Education. Critical realism, as developed by British philosopher Roy Bhaskar, is known for its capacity to serve as a conceptual underlabourer to applied fields like education. Indeed, its success in clarifying and resolving thorny issues of educational theory and practice is now well established. Given critical realism’s sympathetic Marxist origins, its productive and critical engagement with Marxism has an even longer history. To date there has been little sustained attention given to the application of critical realism to Marxist educational praxis. The book addresses this gap in existing scholarship. Its conceptual ground clearing of the field of Marxist Sociology of Education centres on two problematics well-known in the social sciences: naturalism and the structure-agency relation. Marxist theory from the days of Marx to the present is shown to also be haunted by these problematics. This has resulted in considerable tension around the meaning and nature of, for example, reform, revolution, class determinism and class struggle. With its emergence in the 1970s as a child of Western Marxism, the field continues to be an expression of these tensions that seriously limit its transformative potential. Addressing these issues and offering conceptual clarification in the interests of revolutionary educational practice, Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education provides a new perspective on education which will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners alike.

In theology and the philosophy of religion questions concerning God's existence are often understood and discussed in terms of metaphysical realism. Metaphysical realism, however, is a philosophically untenable perspective, according to this study. Its impact on the philosophy of religion is therefore problematic. By using arguments presented by W.V. Quine, Hilary Putnam and William P. Alston the author shows why metaphysical realism is a philosophically untenable perspective and what this implies when it comes to questions concerning God's existence. Drawing on the work of Putnam, Michael Dummett and Donald Davidson, the author elaborates a non-metaphysical realist perspective that she recommends as a philosophically tenable alternative that can be used in theology and the philosophy of religion. Non-metaphysical realism, this study claims, encourages philosophers of religion to engage in a fruitful reflection on present-day problems caused by the phenomenon of religion and of importance to human beings living in today's society.

This book provides an account of an original educational philosophy, developed by one of the most significant philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Roy Bhaskar. Though he directed his attention to wider matters than education, his philosophy has implications for the way we can understand how the world is structured and in turn how we can transform it to accommodate a desire for a better arrangement of resources for human well-being. It is thus both a theory of mind and world and in addition, a theory of education. Roy Bhaskar’s philosophy has a view on the following important matters: intentionality, agential capacity, materialism, the possibility of describing and changing the world, progression, education and the lifecourse, essentialism and human nature, pedagogy, knowledge and knowledge-development, the formation of the self, curricular aims and objectives, being with other people, the self in the learning process, the relationship between the self (or agency) and the environment, stratification, emergence, representation and its different modes, structures and mechanisms, the dialectic and criticality.

Building on its origins at a seminar in Oslo organized by two of the editors, this book combines classic texts of Nordic ecophilosophy and the original contributions of those influenced by this tradition to present the view that critical realism is indeed a worthy intellectual tradition to carry forward and further develop the work of the founders of Nordic ecophilosophy. It was clear at the seminar that there was a promising convergence of interests and themes in the two approaches; while at the same time, within the Nordic ecophilosophical tradition, there was appreciation of the capacity of critical realism, with its provision of a robust philosophical ontology and generation of totalizing immanent critiques of Western philosophy, to provide an expansive and secure home for the development of ecophilosophical work generally. If there is a single overarching theme of critical realist philosophy, it surely must be that of the unity of theory and practice, which Bhaskar, following Hegel, has also called "seriousness". This makes the applicability, relevance and actionability of critical realism key considerations for critical realists. There can be no doubt that this concern was shared fully by the Nordic ecophilosophers; and this quality of "seriousness" is a striking feature of the Nordic contributions presented in this book.