Talk:Roy Bhaskar

Untitled
This article calls Bhaskar the "originator" of critical realism, but our article on that subject refers to Bhaskar only as the figure most associated with recent critical realism. This seems to hinge on what exactly we allow to fall under the label "critical realism", so perhaps should be clarified. --Delirium 09:23, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I understand it, Critical Realism is a name that's used by several unrelated schools of thought. I'm only familiar with Bhaskar's Critical Realism and he was certainly the originator of that school (it's almost exclusively based on his works). Blankfrackis (talk) 23:57, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 04:58, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Transcendental realism and critical naturalism
The treatment of these two aspects of Bhaskar's thought is inconsistent. Transcendental realism redirects to a separate article, which includes material that it would make more sense to include in the Bhaskar article. Critical naturalism redirects to a section of the Critical Realism article, where it is covered very briefly. I propose: (a) replacing the 'original CR' subsection of this article (Roy Bhaskar) with two subsections, one on transcendental realism and one on critical naturalism, with the material on A Realist Theory of Science in the former and that on the Possibility of Naturalism in the latter; (b) moving the content on TR into the first of these new subsections and deleting the separate article; (c) copying any significant material on critical naturalism from the CR article into the new subsection here; (d) changing the links to TR and CN to redirect to these new subsections. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Workingonit27 (talk • contribs) 12:57, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Relation with Marxism
I recently removed the word Marxist from the opening sentence which described Bhaskar as a 'Marxist philosopher of science', stating in the change description that 'while he had Marxist sympathies his work is not primarily concerned with Marxism'. I see that an anonymous user has reinstated the word Marxist without further explanation. I propose to remove it again, but to add a section later in the article on the relationship of Bhaskar's work to Marxism. Workingonit27 (talk) 09:46, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I have now removed the word Marxist from the opening sentence again, and added a section on influences on Bhaskar's work, which acknowledges Marx's influence but puts it in the context of the other influences Bhaskar acknowledge on the various phases of his work. --Workingonit27 (talk) 16:38, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I see that the same anonymous user has once again reinstated the word Marxist, without engaging in this discussion, justifying the change with "He was literally a Marxist". I don't dispute that he had Marxist sympathies, although it is not entirely clear whether he would have applied the label to himself. My point is that Marxism is not central enough to his identity, his contribution or his impact to feature in the single opening sentence about who he was and why he was important. Instead it is something that should be discussed in the body of the article and I have added two sections, one on his influences and one on his politics, that do exactly that. Workingonit27 (talk) 16:53, 20 February 2021 (UTC)