Reality

Abstract

The question as to whether, and to what extent, crises are real phenomena can hardly be solved merely by catching a first glimpse of Marxist and International Relations (IR) crisis literature, as conducted in chapter 1. A number of questions follow from this, touching on issues of ontology and epistemology as traditionally discussed in philosophy. One overriding issue to be elucidated lies in the separation of “mind” and “world” that has been taken for granted in the different positivist and critical realist research strands in the social sciences.¹ First of all, what do these two concepts—“mind” and “world”—refer to? Does it make sense to draw a clear line between mind and world and treat the two concepts as mutually exclusive? If yes (which will be shown to be highly problematic), is it possible to speak of reality as existing independently of the mind, as put forward by Marxists over more than one and a half centuries? Or can we reduce “world” to concepts, as has been popular among idealist philosophers in the tradition of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel? Both “mind-world monism” and “mind-world dualism” are renounced in what follows: First, understanding is not conceived as the activity of an autonomous subject;² and second, one may legitimately ask whether it is beneficial at all to speak of an independently existing “world,” particularly when we address problems of the social. The concept of “reality” might only be expedient if embedded in a system of differential practices.