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 o...

Desperate for survival in the rude city, Rita is fortunate to get hired as a household help by a retired diplomat. At that moment, Arijit Basu does not know that she is an undocumented migrant. Convulsed by a marauding tide of events, the two are reduced to wrecks. Arijit's fiancée, Nandita, fights bravely to recover the vulnerable girl from the circles of evil. The outcome of this struggle irrevocably impacts their lives.Lyrical, epic and devastating, Border Crossers brin...

A Realist Theory of Science is one of the few books that have changed our understanding of the philosophy of science. In this analysis of the natural sciences, with a particular focus on the experimental process itself, Roy Bhaskar provides a definitive critique of the traditional, positivist conception of science and stakes out an alternative, realist position. Since it original publication in 1975, a movement known as 'Critical Realism', which is both intellectually diverse and ...

Originally published in 1989, Reclaiming Reality still provides the most accessible introduction to the increasingly influential multi-disciplinary and international body of thought, known as critical realism. It is designed to "underlabour" both for the sciences, especially the human sciences, and for the projects of human emancipation which such sciences may come to inform; and provides an enlightening intervention in current debates about realism and relativism, positivism and poststuct...

This book on the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality and its development is based on conversations between Roy Bhaskar, the originator of the philosophy, and Savita Singh, a distinguished Indian poet and social theorist. The wide range of topics covered include the priority of being over thought, reversing the traditional emphasis in the West; transcendence as an everyday phenomenon; the prefiguration of the good society in the characteristic labour of women; the metacritique o...

This series of interviews, conducted in the form of exchanges between Roy Bhaskar and Mervyn Hartwig, tells a riveting story of the formation and development of critical realism.Three intersecting and interweaving narratives unfold in the course of this unfinished story: the personal narrative of Roy Bhaskar, born of an Indian father and English mother, a child of post-war Britain and Indian partition and independence; the intellectual narrative of the emergence and growth of criti...

In this concise text, Roy Bhaskar sets out to diagnose, explain and resolve the "problems of philosophy". Plato Etc. reviews all the main areas of the subject: the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science; the philosophy of logic and language; the philosophies of space, time and causality; the philosophy of the social and life sciences and of dialectic; ethics, politics and aesthetics; and the history and sociology of philosophy.Among the issues discussed are the prob...

Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change is a major new book addressing one of the most challenging questions of our time. Its unique standpoint is based on the recognition that effective and coherent interdisciplinarity is necessary to deal with the issue of climate change, and the multitude of linked phenomena which both constitute and connect to it.In the opening chapter, Roy Bhaskar makes use of the extensive resources of critical realism to articulate a comprehensive fr...

Critical realism is a movement in philosophy and the human sciences most closely associated with the work of Roy Bhaskar. Since the publication of Bhaskars A Realist Theory of Science, critical realism has had a profound influence on a wide range of subjects. This reader makes accessible, in one volume, key readings to stimulate debate about and within critical realism.It explores the following themes:* transcendental realist* the theory of explanatory critiqu...

In this book, the authors provide a much-needed general theory of interdisciplinarity and relate it to health/wellbeing research and professional practice. In so doing they make it possible for practitioners of the different disciplines to communicate without contradiction or compromise, resolving the tensions that beset much interdisciplinary work.Such a general theory is only possible if we assume that there is more to being (ontology) than empirical being (what we can measure di...

Since the 1970s, critical realism has grown to address a range of subjects, including economics, philosophy, science, and religion. It has become a complex and mature philosophy.Enlightened Common Sense: The Philosophy of Critical Realism looks back over this development in one concise and accessible volume. The late Roy Bhaskar was critical realism’s philosophical originator and chief exponent. He draws on a lifetime’s experience to give a definitive, systematic account of this in...

First published in 2011. In Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom Roy Bhaskar sets out to develop a critique of the work of Richard Rorty, who must be one of the most in?uential authors of recent decades. In a brilliant tour de force, Bhaskar shows how Rorty falls victim to the very epistemological problematic Rorty himself describes. Roy Bhaskar argues that Rorty’s account of science and knowledge is based on a half-truth. He sees the historicity of knowledge but cannot sustain its rationali...