Against the Spiritual Turn: Marxism, Realism, and Critical Theory / Edition 1

by Sean Creaven

Overview

The argument presented in this book is that the recent ‘spiritual’ trajectory of Roy Bhaskar’s work, upon which he first embarked with the publication of his From East to West, undermines the fundamental achievements of his earlier work. The problem with Bhaskar’s new philosophical system (Transcendental Dialectical Critical Realism or simply Meta-Reality), from the critical-realist Marxist perspective endorsed here, is that it marks both a departure from and a negation of the earlier concerns of Bhaskar to develop a realist philosophy of science and under-labour for an emancipatory materialist socio-historical science. The end-result is a meta-philosophy which is irrealist, speculative, under-theorized, internally self-contradictory, and which cannot provide philosophical guidance to liberatory social practices. In opposition to theist ontological logics more generally (including the rather more rational theism presented by Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier and Doug Porpora), the argument of this book is that the earth-bound materialist dialectics of the classical Marxist tradition, and the naturalistic humanism these dialectics under-labour on the terrain of socio-historical being, offer a much more promising way forward for critical realist theory and for liberatory politics and ethics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415490313
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/28/2009
Series:	Routledge Studies in Critical Realism
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Sean Creaven is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of England (UWE).

Table of Contents

Preface viii

Acknowledgements x

List of abbreviations xii

Author's note xiii

Introduction 1

1 Bhaskar's 'spiritual turn': logical and conceptual problems 13

2 Meta-reality, critical realism and Marxism 80

3 Secularism, agnosticism and theism 140

4 Critical realism, Transcendence and God 214

5 Humanism, spiritualism and critical theory 322

Conclusion 414

Notes 414

Bibliography 468

Index 480