Contextual Realism An Interview with Jocelyn Benoist

Abstract

Jocelyn Benoist, a famous French philosopher, tells about the principal directions if his investigations, the reasons why he rejects phenomenology, his realist position and its relation with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, about the problems and pseudo-problems of contemporary philosophy, in particular, analytic epistemology, scientific realism, philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics. The correspondence theory of truth, anti-realism, idealism, relativism and «new realism» of the 21th century are also critically assessed. Contextual realism takes into account the categorial distinction between the ideal and the real. This is not a doctrine, but a critical, therapeutic approach. At the same time, rejecting the traditional metaphysics, it is not deprived of the genuine metaphysical dimension. We can know the things themselves.