Introduction to New Realism provides an overview of the movement of
contemporary thought named New Realism, by its creator and most
celebrated practitioner, Maurizio Ferraris. Sharing significant concerns
and features with Speculative Realism and Object Oriented Ontology, New
Realism can be said to be one of the most prescient philosophical
positions today. Its desire to overcome the postmodern antirealism of
Kantian origin, and to reassert the importance of truth and objectivity
in the name of a new Enlightenment, has had an enormous resonance both
in Europe and in the US. Introduction to New Realism is the first
volume dedicated to exposing this continental movement to an anglophone
audience.
Featuring a foreword by the eminent contemporary philosopher and leading
exponent of Speculative Realism, Iain Hamilton Grant, the book begins by
tracing the genesis of New Realism, and outlining its central
theoretical tenets, before opening onto three distinct sections. The
first, 'Negativity', is a critique of the postmodern idea that the world
is constructed by our conceptual schemas, all the more so as we have
entered the age of digitality and virtuality. The second thesis,
'positivity', proposes the fundamental ontological assertion of New
Realism, namely that not only are there parts of reality that are
independent of thought, but these parts are also able to act causally
over thought and the human world. The third thesis, 'normativity, '
applies New Realism to the sphere of the social world. Finally, an
afterword written by two young scholars explains in more detail the
relationship between New Realism and other forms of contemporary
realism.
