Reality, Truth and the Future of Philosophy
Sher Ahmed Durrani
Quetta: In contemporary philosophy, realism has returned with remarkable force. After decades in which suspicion, interpretation and the limits of human knowledge dominated intellectual debate, many philosophers have once again turned towards “the real”. The attraction is understandable. In an age of misinformation, ideological polarisation and competing versions of reality, the promise of returning to facts appears both intellectually reassuring and politically necessary.
Yet an important question remains: Can realism really become the future of philosophy?
The answer, I would argue, is no—not because reality is unimportant, but because philosophy cannot be reduced to the simple task of identifying what is real.
At the heart of contemporary realism lies a relatively straightforward proposition: reality exists independently of our judgments about it, and human beings can, at least in principle, know it. Truth, consequently, is understood through correspondence. A proposition is true when it corresponds to an external fact, state of affairs or world that exists independently of the person making the judgment.
In this view, reality becomes the “truth-maker”. What exists outside our minds provides the foundation that makes our statements true or false.
This position represents a significant departure from the deep suspicion that characterised much intellectual debate in the latter half of the twentieth century. The suspicion was that perhaps we could never gain access to reality “in itself”; that what we call reality is always mediated through language, interpretation, culture or historical circumstances.
Realism rejects this radical scepticism.
But an intriguing problem immediately emerges. If different philosophical traditions agree that reality is independent of our judgments and that truth depends upon correspondence with that reality, why do they disagree so profoundly about what reality actually consists of?
The answer is that they disagree not necessarily about the definition of the real, but about its contents.
For some, reality is what can be directly perceived. For physicalists, materialists and naturalists, the real may consist primarily of physical objects, material processes and states of affairs. Phenomenologists may turn towards the “given” of experience. Wittgensteinian approaches may emphasise forms of life. Certain analytic metaphysicians may focus on essences, while advocates of a so-called flat ontology may be willing to grant reality to an extraordinarily broad range of entities—even the unicorn.
These disagreements are not minor. They reveal a fundamental problem within contemporary realism: if almost anything can be declared real, what precisely does realism add to philosophy?
The concept of reality risks becoming so expansive that it loses its explanatory power.
This is where the contemporary realist project faces two dangers.
The first is that, by allowing every philosophical tradition to identify its own preferred “real”—nature, matter, experience, social forms, essences or even fictional entities—the concept of reality itself may become diluted. If everything is real in some meaningful sense, then the distinction between reality and interpretation becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
The second danger concerns the very identity of philosophy.
Philosophy has never been merely an inventory of things that exist. It has also been an activity of reflection. It asks not only what is the case, but how we know what is the case, what makes our concepts possible, what assumptions structure our judgments and what ought to be possible beyond the present order of things.
This distinction matters enormously.
A scientist may establish that a particular phenomenon occurs. A historian may demonstrate that a particular event happened. A journalist may establish what happened yesterday. These are indispensable forms of knowledge. But philosophy asks questions that cannot always be settled simply by pointing towards a fact.
What does it mean for something to be true? What counts as knowledge?
What makes an action just? What constitutes freedom?
What kind of political community should we seek?
What possibilities remain hidden within existing social arrangements?
These questions require reflection.
And reflection cannot simply be replaced by reference.
The danger of reducing philosophy to realism is therefore not that realism takes reality seriously. Philosophy should certainly take reality seriously. The danger is that reality may be treated as if it were self-explanatory.
Reality does not always speak for itself. Facts require concepts through which they become intelligible. Events require interpretation. Social realities are often constituted through institutions, language, practices and relationships. Even when we agree about the existence of a fact, we may profoundly disagree about its meaning.
Consider contemporary politics. A statistic may tell us how many people live below a particular poverty line. But the statistic alone does not tell us what justice requires. A census may establish the size of a population, but it cannot by itself determine what political rights that population should possess. A climate report can demonstrate environmental degradation, but it does not independently answer the political and ethical question of who should bear the cost of environmental protection.
Facts matter. But facts do not exhaust philosophical questions.
This is why the traditional philosophical ambition of universality remains important.
The universal is not simply something waiting to be discovered among the facts of the world. It is also an intellectual and normative achievement. Philosophy attempts to move beyond the particular without losing sight of it. It searches for principles that can illuminate different experiences, societies and historical circumstances.
In this sense, philosophy is not merely a mirror held up to reality. It is also an architecture of possibility.
This does not mean that philosophers should abandon reality for abstract speculation. On the contrary, philosophy becomes dangerous when it becomes detached from the world. The challenge is to hold together two dimensions that are often separated: attention to what is and reflection upon what could be.
A philosophy concerned only with what exists risks becoming conservative in the deepest intellectual sense. If the existing world is treated as the ultimate measure of truth, possibilities that have not yet materialised may appear unintelligible or unrealistic.
Yet many of humanity’s most important political and moral achievements began precisely as possibilities that were not yet realities.
Democracy, universal suffrage, human rights and gender equality were not simply facts waiting to be discovered. They were projects of imagination, argument and political struggle. They required people to ask not merely what society was, but what society could become.
That is why philosophy must retain its capacity to construct possibilities.
The question, then, is not whether realism is correct in insisting upon an independent reality. Reality matters. Facts matter. Truth matters. The more important question is whether these commitments are sufficient to define the future of philosophy.
They are not.
Philosophy has other instruments besides reference to facts. It has reflection, critique, conceptual analysis and imagination. It has other purposes besides identifying what is punctually the case. It seeks meaning, universality and possibility.
The philosopher, therefore, should not merely point towards reality.
The philosopher must also ask what reality means, how it became what it is, whether it could be otherwise—and what kind of world we ought to build.
The future of philosophy should consequently not belong exclusively to realism, anti-realism or any other single philosophical camp. Its future lies in preserving the tension between reality and possibility, fact and reflection, what is and what ought to be.
Reality may provide the ground from which philosophy begins.
But it should never be the place where philosophy ends.
Sher Ahmed Durrani is a senior lecturer in Political Science at the University of Loralai, Pakistan, and a PhD candidate at Quaid-i-Azam University. His research focuses on socio-political systems and sustainable development in South Asia. He can be reached at sherahmed.durrani@gmail.com.
The article is the writer’s opinion, it may or may not adhere to the organization’s editorial policy.
