http://maneypublishing.com/index.php/journals/rea/
Call for Papers: Special Issue of Journal of Critical Realism 14(2) 2015
MetaRealism
Edited by Mervyn Hartwig
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.
