Roy Bhaskar - Criticism

Criticism

Whilst his early books were 'models of clarity and rigour', Bhaskar has been criticized for the "truly appalling style" (Alex Callinicos, 1994) in which his 'dialectical' works are written.

Other criticisms have been levelled at the substance of Bhaskar's arguments at various points. One objection to Bhaskar's early Critical Realism is that it begs the question, assuming, rather than proving, the existence of the intransitive domain. Another objection, raised by Callinicos and others, is that Bhaskar's so-called 'transcendental arguments' are not really that. They are certainly not typical transcendental arguments as philosophers such as Charles Taylor have defined them, the distinguishing feature of which is the identification of some putative condition on the possibility of experience. (However, his arguments function in an analogous way since they try to argue that scientific practice would be unintelligible and/or inexplicable in the absence of the ontological features he identifies.)

It has been alleged that the dialectical phase of his philosophy proves too much, since Critical Realism was already dialectical.

Bhaskar's concept of real absence has been questioned by, among others, Andrew Collier, who points out that it in fact fails to distinguish properly between real and nominal absences (in "On Real and Nominal Absences", in After Postmodernism, 2001).

Bhaskar's most recent 'spiritual' phase has been criticized by many (most?) adherents of early Critical Realism for departing from the fundamental positions which made it important and interesting, without providing philosophical support for his new ideas.