REALISM AND ANTI-REALISM: NEW PERSPECTIVES

The 2000s have been unequivocally marked by a ‘return to realism’ or a ‘shift’ to realism. The now widespread term ‘Object-oriented philosophy’ was coined in 1999, in Graham Harman’s PhD dissertation, published in 2002 as Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. The same year, Manuel De Landa’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy came out. In 2006 Quentin Meillassoux’s Après la finitude was published, followed in 2007 by Paul Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge. The same year, a conference was held in which Speculative Realism was born. In 2011, a notorious article on La Repubblica, which then was turned into a full manifesto, marked the birth of New Realism in Italy, and the year after Markus Gabriel’s Il senso dell’esistenza. Per un nuovo realismo ontologico came out. And this is just to name the most famous publications. So, all these books seem to signal a certain paradigm shift in philosophy. Furthermore, two new movements appear to have been born. The name ‘Speculative Realism,’ which later became that of an entire philosophical movement (even though a very vaguely defined one), was originally the title of a conference held at Goldsmiths College in London on April 27th 2007. Italian New Realism was born during a conversation between Markus Gabriel and Maurizio Ferraris (apparently in Naples, at half past one on June 23, 2011) and was later inaugurated at an eponymous conference in Bonn in 2012. The debate triggered by this turn was immense (to get an idea, visit the Press Review on New Realism, or the many blogs and journals devoted to Speculative Realism, such as Speculations or D.U.S.T.). What follows is a contribution to the discussion, including some of the protagonists (an essay by Maurizio Ferraris and a triple interview to Tristan Garcia, Graham Harman and Lee Braver) and many interpreters and young scholars reacting to it. The topic addressed are varied: from documentality (Davies and Cecchi) to art and aesthetics (Andina, Dal Sasso), the role of anthropocentrism in philosophy (Caffo) and that of realism as a frame of reference (Taddio). Also, this is one of the very first issues gathering the receptions of Speculative Realism and Object Oriented Ontology in Italy (see, especially, Longo). We hope to provide the reader with a good overview of the relation between different forms of post-postmodern realism and the “consequences of realism” – to quote the title of a recent international conference – on other fields of knowledge.