Call for Papers: Special Issue of Journal of Critical Realism 14(2) 2015 

 

 

Edited by Mervyn Hartwig 

Email: mh@jaspere7.demon.co.uk

When at the turn of the millennium the International Association for Critical Realism staged a conference around the theme, ‘After postmodernism: critical realism?’, the idea was greeted with considerable scepticism. A little over a decade later, in the midst of perilous global multicrisis, realisms – critical and otherwise – are flourishing, and there is growing awareness that if we humans are to find a way out of the current mess we will need to move on to a new, genuinely post-modern or post-capitalist form of life, presupposing a new, de-alienated way of viewing and relating to the natural and social orders and each other.

MetaRealism, like critical realism, which it preservatively sublates, is a philosophy of the transition from capitalist modernity to a eudaimonian future. It is arguably the developmentally necessary ‘completion’ of Roy Bhaskar’s philosophical system, as an ultimate stratum of identity-in-difference and union (non-duality) is seen to underlie and sustain the world of non-identity (duality) that is the focus of original or basic critical realism  (BCR) and dialectical critical realism (DCR), analogously to the interconnectedness of quantum phenomena and their ingredience in emergent levels of being. Our three previous special issues have been devoted to BCR (Causal powers) and DCR (Dialectic), with a third spanning both (Engaging postcolonialism). Interest in metaRealism is burgeoning. The time is ripe for a special issue that explores the potential of this exciting philosophy for the project of human emancipation and advances its critical reception.

Topics for which we are interested in receiving papers include, but are by no means limited to the following (loosely grouped, after the first five, in terms of MELDARA):

–        appraisal of the arguments for metaRealism

–        metaRealism and the ‘returns’ to spirituality and/or religion

–        feminist appraisals of metaRealism

–        sexuality, gender and metaRealism

–        metaRealism and integral theory

–        the concept of a person and the model of the self as comprising the atomistic ego, the embodied personality and the unlimited or transcendental self or ground-state

–        metaRealist and animic ontologies

–        the metaRealist critique of Tim Ingold’s relational ontology (or vice versa)

–        is metaRealism a form of panentheism?

–        Bhaskar, Ernst Bloch and metaRealism

–        metaRealism and the findings of modern science

–        the transcendental foundations of modern social theory (Daniel Chernilo)

–        transcendence and the sociology of everyday life, the pervasive spirituality of everyday life

–        resolving the antinomy of freedom and slavery (the co-presence of essential freedom and actual enslavement) in modernity

–        creativity (in the domains of science, art, love, politics, spirituality, re-enchantment and/or unity)

–        science as ‘practical mysticism’; anamnesis and the revelation of truth

–        metaRealism as a thorough-going naturalism, stretching our understanding of the natural; the universe as an open, implicitly conscious developing material system

–        critique of the discursive intellect and/or other aspects of the philosophical discourse of modernity

–        the notion that trust, solidarity and love are the primary human existentials (‘baseline communism’ and the pulse of freedom), more fundamental than reciprocity, exchange and recognition (Bhaskar, David Graeber)

–        an ethics of care

–        Bhaskar and Badiou on love

–        the unity of theory and practice as the coherence of love

–        the view that humanity has already entered an era of love (Luc Ferry)

–        the primacy of self- or subject-referentiality in social change

–        spontaneous right action as an ethical concept

–        the human capacities for universal solidarity and axial rationality

–        critique of panpsychism

–        Marx’s spiritual insights and metaRealism

–        the spiritual progressives movement

–        the metaRealist critique of religion

–        inter-faith, intra-faith and extra-faith dialogue and religious literacy

–        is metaRealism maximally inclusive? How can it appeal to people of ‘all faiths and no faith’?

–        peace studies and conflict resolution

–        deep ecology and metaRealism

–        the implicit metaRealism of Walter Benjamin and/or Marcel Proust

–        disenchantment/re-enchantment

–        metaRealism and the anthropology of wonder

Instructions for authors

Papers should be no more than 8,000 words (not inclusive of references). In all other respects, our Instructions for authors apply. Please consult these at http://maneypublishing.com/index.php/journals/rea/

Articles (as distinct from pieces for our Perspective and Debate sections) will be subject to external peer review. Submissions need not be exclusively concerned with metaRealism or its critique, but should relate their arguments in some significant way to metaRealism. A critique of panpsychism, e.g., need not be exclusively from a metaRealist perspective, but should include consideration of it.

Important dates

Feb. 03, 2014:                         deadline for proposals (300-500 word abstract)

Mar. 10, 2014:             notification of acceptance (scholarly articles subject to peer review)

July 29, 2014:              deadline for first drafts

Oct. 06, 2014:                         reviewers’ reports and editors’ decision provided

Dec. 08, 2014:             deadline for final drafts

Jan. 05, 2015:              final copy due with the publisher

April 2015:                   publication of special issue online and print

Enquiries and submissions

Please send enquiries, abstract proposals (including title, affiliation, contact details, and a brief bio) and first and final drafts by email attachment to Mervyn Hartwig, mh@jaspere7.demon.co.uk. (This email will probably change soon. The new email will be posted on http://maneypublishing.com/ index.php/journals/rea/ and the Critical Realism List, etc.). From early in 2014 it will be possible to upload your submission to JCR’s new Editorial Manager site (currently being built); if you choose that route please mark your paper ‘for special issue on metaRealism’.  

If your paper is accepted but not included in the special issue, it will appear in a subsequent issue.

About JCR

Journal of Critical Realism (JCR) is the journal of the International Association for Critical Realism (IACR), established in 1997 to foster the discussion, propagation and development of critical realist approaches to understanding and changing the world. It provides a forum for scholars wishing to promote realist emancipatory philosophy, social theory and science on an interdisciplinary and international basis, and for those who wish to engage with such an approach.