The ‘problem of reality’ – what problem?

Critical realists took their cue from early statements and expressions of the ‘ontological turn’ (as it can be found in Wendt's counter-ontology to structural realism)Footnote ⁶ and focused on the work of Roy Bhaskar. Through their interpretation of his scientific realist approach in the Philosophy of Science they developed an influential strand in IR theory that currently builds one of the strongest expressions of the renewed interest in ontological matters.Footnote ⁷

At the heart of the approach lies the meta-theoretical claim that ontology should be seen as primary. Entities we encounter in our attempts to understand the (political) world we inhabit are existentially not dependent upon human knowledge. A focus on epistemology, as can be found in many quarters of IR theorising can create the illusion that entities ‘out there’ are not real but in their very existence dependent upon human thought processes. The main claim of CR as an adaptation of scientific realism stipulates that the ‘real world of beings’ in its existence transcends the debates regarding different ways of knowing them and thereby builds the foundation for any theorising in the first place.Footnote ⁸ The first major claim then that critical realists make is that ‘[o]n a realist ontology … being is independent of human experience and/or expressions of it.’Footnote ⁹

Furthermore, through a one size fits all epistemology we might or most certainly will foreclose the possibility to study and understand different entities in different ways. ‘The attempt to specify epistemological and/or methodological criteria for science in advance of ontological commitments is an act of unnecessary closure.’Footnote ¹⁰ The entities as such exist for critical realists as factual whereas epistemological and methodological devices and approaches illuminate these givens in different ways. What is fundamental then are these really existing entities because of their immunity to yield to human questioning regarding their very existence.

Following this logic, critical realists claim that ontology is and must be the very starting point for any approach to International Relations simply because the ontological givens build the very bottom of the reality in which we are immersed. ‘Every theory of knowledge must logically presuppose a theory of what the world is like (ontology), for knowledge (epistemology) to be possible.’Footnote ¹¹ Therefore ‘[a]ll theories presuppose a basic ontology from which all other considerations follow. No ontology, no theory.’Footnote ¹²

Critical realists maintain that any attempt to achieve knowledge is dependent on deeper ontological structures – a position they name ‘depth-realism’.Footnote ¹³ A central backbone of this position are the so called ‘intransitive objects’.Footnote ¹⁴ Intransitive objects in this understanding are beings (observables and unobservables alike)Footnote ¹⁵ that exist independent of human interference or even human existence as a whole. ‘A commitment to depth realism presupposes that there are things, entities, structures and/or mechanisms that operate and exist independently of our ability to know or manipulate them.’Footnote ¹⁶ These intransitive objects in turn influence human existence as they present enabling and restraining features intrinsic to their nature which open certain spaces of knowledge, action, and manipulability for the human agents interacting with them.

If we take these general arguments together they reveal what for Heidegger is the common fallacy which both realists and anti-realists subscribe to. The claims that ‘being is independent of human experience and/or expressions of itFootnote ¹⁷ on the one hand and the statement that ‘[a] commitment to depth realism presupposes that there are things, entities, structures and/or mechanisms that operate and exist independently of our ability to know or manipulate them’Footnote ¹⁸ seem to express the same argument. But they do not since the first statement is a statement about the being of entities whereas the second statement is a statement about entities. This difference which is commonly referred to as the ‘ontological difference’ accounts for Heidegger's peculiar and yet insightful position within this debate.

For Heidegger, this distinction between entities and the being of entities is crucial and he claims that traditional ontological models have conflated the two in different ways. Realists rightly observed that entities exist independent of human understanding but for them this implied that the being of these entities lies outside human understanding as well. Idealists on the other hand maintained that the being of entities resides within human understanding but they made the problematic assumption that this means that the entities are also dependent upon human understanding. The conflation between entities and the being of entities is therefore the crucial point through which Heidegger establishes his transcendent move beyond the realist/anti-realist chasm. In his understanding, based on the notion of the ontological difference, entities are indeed independent in human understanding (the realist element) but their being as entities can only be realised through a specific form of being which is human being (in Heidegger's jargon Dasein). For Heidegger then any position that ignores the ontological difference and thereby follows the Western metaphysical tradition already commits a fallacy before even entering any realist/anti-realist exchange.

Before one, however, can proceed to an assessment of the notions of science and language it seems necessary to elaborate Heidegger's position towards the realism/anti-realism divide more clearly. Indeed, one is not hard pressed to find quotes in Heidegger's work in all its different phases that seemingly support a clear realist position. In a key section in Being and Time that addresses the question of the reality of the external world he states: ‘The fact that reality is ontologically grounded in the being of Dasein cannot mean that something real can only be what it is in itself when and as long as Dasein exists.’Footnote ¹⁹ Or: ‘Beings are independently of the experience, cognition, and comprehension through which they are disclosed, discovered, and determined.’Footnote ²⁰ Both statements clearly seem to endorse a realist stand towards the question of whether entities can be seen as independent of human understanding. But this is only one side of the story. Every time Heidegger seems to endorse this realism he also seems to shy away from it. Directly following the above statements we find Heidegger arguing: ‘However, only as long as Dasein is, that is, as long as there is the ontic possibility of an understanding of being, is there being.’Footnote ²¹ And: ‘But being “is” only in the understanding of that being to whose being something like an understanding of being belongs.’Footnote ²²

What are we to make of these seemingly contradictory statements and how do they help us reconceptualise the ‘problem of reality’? First of all, the apparent contradiction in these claims is dissolved when we read them in light of the ontological difference mentioned above an separate the different elements into claims concerning entities on the one hand and the being of entities on the other. Conflating the two brings us to the stalemate in the realism/anti-realism debate. ‘Yet where realism was guilty of conflating the independence of natural objects with their being, idealism conversely confused the dependency of being with entities, so that the entities themselves were seen as dependent on human understanding.’Footnote ²³ Furthermore, Heidegger reveals here that the debate between realists and anti-realists rest on a very specific interpretation of ontology which posits the ‘problem of reality’ as a problem in the first place. As he points out: ‘The “scandal of philosophy” does not consist in the fact that this proof [of an external world] is still lacking up to now, but in the fact that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. Such expectations, intentions, and demands grow out of an ontologically insufficient way of positing what it is from which, independently and “outside” of which, a “world” is to be proven as objectively present.’Footnote ²⁴ We reach here the heart of the Heideggerian critique on any attempt, necessity, and ability to ‘proof’ or existentially posit the existence of the external world. Heidegger maintains that the problem of an external reality mainly arises in the Western tradition because of the positing of the seemingly ontologically primitive and distinct entities of ‘subject’ and ‘object’. Only through conceptualising the problem as consisting in bridging the gap between a seemingly self-contained subject and the external surroundings in which it dwells, that is objects, does the need for ‘realism’ arise. The possibility for the ‘problem of reality’ to emerge ‘lies in the falling prey of Dasein and in the diversion motivated therein of the primary understanding of being to the being of objective presence.’Footnote ²⁵

Opposing this conceptualisation of the ontological foundation being characterised by the subject-object divide Heidegger sees the question of ‘proving reality’ as ‘scandalous’ simply because there is nothing to prove in the first place. Or, in other terms, the need for proof arises out of the very conditions which make the quest for such a proof necessary. The starting point which posits a subject in a yet to be determined relation to an object is in fact already portraying an understanding of being which makes subject and object possible, that is, an understanding that has already posited the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity. In Heidegger's view this tendency of abstraction and theoretical circumspection of a specific kind of being (roughly the post-Cartesian subject) conceals the much more fundamental characteristic of Dasein as always already situated within a world (Heidegger's being-in-the-world).Footnote ²⁶ In the most rudimentary sense human beings should not be thought of as worldless to begin with. ‘A human being is not a Cartesian subject that is in principle distinct from the world, but is an entity whose being is characterised by its very involvement in the world.’Footnote ²⁷ Initially, Dasein acts out of a constant involvement in a world in which the entities it deals with assume a role in the constant projection of Dasein into its own possibilities; they assume a presence of usefulness which Heidegger calls Zuhandenheit (readiness-to-hand). The theoretical attitude which we assume when looking at an ‘object’ as external to a ‘subject’ which reduces this constant involvement to a state in which the opposition between Dasein qua subjects and entities qua objects arises is based on a very specific tradition within Western metaphysics. ‘Heidegger argues that traditional ontology has shattered the phenomenon of the human being, breaking up the unitary whole of being-in-the-world into the discrete elements of the human subject and external objects which it then attempts to join together into a world.’Footnote ²⁸ This attitude is characterised by Vorhandenheit (presence-at-hand) which sees entities as objects external to a subject and initially graspable in an ‘un-involved’ manner. In order to do so, however, objects must always already have been encountered as zuhanden (ready-to-hand)Footnote ²⁹ and only within this encounter is a derivative conceptualisation based on subjectivity and objectivity possible. The ‘problem of reality’ is therefore only a problem under very specific, ontologically derivative circumstances.

The question concerning the ‘reality’ of entities then ‘is ontologically based on the fundamental constitution of Dasein, on being-in-the-world.’Footnote ³⁰ Following the described distinction between Zuhandenheit (readiness-to-hand) as ontologically fundamental and Vorhandenheit (presence-at-hand) as ontologically derivative as well as Heidegger's distinction between entities and the being of entities ‘[t]he question of whether there is a world at all and whether it can be demonstrated, makes no sense at all if it is raised by Dasein as being-in-the-world – and who else should ask it?’Footnote ³¹ This is because

Consequently, Heidegger concludes that ‘[a]s we have noted, being (not beings) is dependent upon the understanding of being, that is, reality (not the real) is dependent upon care.’Footnote ³³ The ontological difference allows for ‘a reconciliation of the central tenet of realism, that beings are independently of human interaction, with the antirealist contention that being is unintelligible outside human involvement.’Footnote ³⁴ This is because ‘[b]eing is not the ontological ground of beings (i.e. the source of their extantness), but rather, the possibility of their intelligibility.’Footnote ³⁵

The underlying interpretation of the meaning of being as Vorhandenheit (presence-at-hand) which provides the very possibility for a realism/anti-realism debate is most prevalent in two elements within CR: a commitment to science on the one hand and a specific view on the nature and function of language. These two elements and their underlying assumptions and conditions of possibility will inform the remainder of this article.

Critical Realism and the shadow of science

The identification of ‘entities’ or ‘objects’ of study as proposed by CR seems to be more complicated or at least more complex than initially thought. In order to stay true to the Critical Realist approach the identification of ‘objects of study’ should take place before and independent of any specific commitments to epistemological positions. Epistemological pluralism is to be welcomed as the entities we study can be illuminated in their different aspects in many different ways. CR therefore proposes a kind of split between what is in fact ‘real’ (independent of the human mind) and what subsequently the human mind does with these ‘real entities’. With this stipulation Critical Realism relies on one of the most sedimented and fundamental distinctions in modernity – the subject/object divide. For critical realists subjects exist in the world together with a number of objects and these subjects in their actions are constrained through specific characteristics of the objects they encounter. These characteristics in turn cannot be altered simply through the power of the human mind but the objects constitute a reality beyond the human subject. As we have seen, CR ‘presupposes that there are things, entities, structures and/or mechanisms that operate and exist independently of our ability to know or manipulate them.’Footnote ³⁶ The existence of these ‘intransitive objects’ makes scientific enquiry possible. ‘Science is possible, then, because the world consists of “intransitive” objects which form the focus of scientific discourses; with the aim of science in particular being the production of knowledge of mechanisms that in certain combinations produce the phenomena that are actually manifest in experience/appearance.’Footnote ³⁷ Science, therefore, is a mode of enquiry that is brought to the objects and is used to establish knowledge in various ways about these objects. The question that CR, however, does not ask is what makes the being of these objects as objects possible.Footnote ³⁸ It is exactly here that we find the always already posited sphere of subjects which encounter the specific objects of their scientific endeavour as vorhanden (present-at-hand). In this sense ‘[t]he scientific method forces nature into calculation by reducing it to objectivity. To take objectivity as exhaustive of the real is for Heidegger totalitarian onto-theology. It totalises beings reductively by understanding them all on the basis of a single being, the technoscientific object that can be reckoned and calculated.’Footnote ³⁹

Such a portrayal of the relation between science and the objects of scientific study as well as the assumption of subjects and objects as ontologically primitive is questionable. What makes these objects of scientific study possible as objects in the first place is an always already taken stand towards being. We can see here that Heidegger's distinction between entities and the being of entities is reflected in that the being of these objects of scientific study depends on an understanding of being that Dasein always already brings to the context under scrutiny. Specifically, a scientific sphere of objects already presupposes a comportment towards being undertaken by Dasein which lets the objects qua objects arise in the first place. ‘Science, like art, opens a world, for which Heidegger continues to insist there are other possibilities. His objection to science is not that it should be condemned as fantasy, but a reminder that the confinement of beings to objectivity is short-sighted.’Footnote ⁴⁰

Science as a specific activity does not simply come to the objects it wants to know and understand but prior to that a scientific commitment in general opens a space in which objects can emerge in the first place. That does not mean that the ‘objects’ in their existence are dependent on science but rather that the conceptual notion of ‘object’ arises out of a scientific discourse. Science as a way of study always already frames the event of grasping as making objects in their objectiveness possible. ‘Modern science simultaneously establishes itself and differentiates itself in its projections of specific object-spheres … This objectifying of whatever is, is accomplished in a setting-before, a representing, that aims at bringing each particular being before it in such a way that man who calculates can be sure, and that means be certain, of that being.Footnote ⁴¹

The grasping of objects qua objects standing over and against a subject is already an expression of the modern scientific interpretation of being. ‘Hidden assumptions about being play out in the sciences epistemologically as the delimitation of beings by objectivity.’Footnote ⁴² Contained within this delimitation we find a commitment to the ‘merits’ of science including its essential manifestation in research defined as ongoing activity with a clearly structured procedure in pursuit of (scientific) knowledge.Footnote ⁴³ In Critical Realism human beings exist simply as one form of being alongside other forms of being and the interaction between these different entities lays the foundation for any scientific endeavour. It is the seemingly most basic ground from which all subsequent movements will take their inception. The ontological plane, however, that is given here as a commonsensical ground is itself not simply there. The ontology of CR itself relies upon specific ontological claims. It seems worthwhile to question deeper and reveal that the ground they take as simply ‘reality’ is itself founded on an always already taken stand towards the meaning of being.

Not only is the notion of ‘object’ (and concomitantly ‘subject’) deeply indebted to a (post)-Cartesian interpretation of the meaning of being but its manifestation through ‘objects’ already bears witness to the scientific mode of problematising, enquiring, and procedural understanding and explaining.Footnote ⁴⁵ The object qua object is in its very objectiveness always already determined as standing in a larger representational logic bound to related concepts and the logic of conceptualisation itself since ‘the scientist projects not just an object, but objectivity.’Footnote ⁴⁶ This objectiveness is hereby as constitutive of science as science is constitutive of the notion of object which emerges not prior to but gains its objectiveness within the scientific interpretation of being. The objects qua objects cannot be apprehended as what they are independent of or even prior to a manifestation of a ‘ground plan’ of ‘what is’ derived from a logic of what can be apprehended (objects) and how it can be apprehended. The sequence here, however, is not a theoretical reflection on what the ground plan should be and a subsequent delineation of objects. Rather, the ground plan of ‘what is’ takes place within in an opening provided by a specific stand towards the meaning of being. The projection of this ground plan occurs in being manifested in the apprehension of its contents, that is, objects. ‘The projection sketches out in advance the manner in which the knowing procedure must bind itself and adhere to the sphere opened up.’Footnote ⁴⁷ In doing so this projection secures ‘for itself its sphere of objects within the realm of Being.’Footnote ⁴⁸

Following this argument, any delineation of beings (in case of scientific enquiries ‘objects’) always already takes place in and is an expression of an interpretation of the meaning of being. The ground in which objects are then identified is not ontologically primitive, that is, simply there, but in its manifestation exhibits a stand towards being as such. Subsequently, the seemingly fundamental ontological distinction between subject and object turns out to be itself representative of an interpretation of the meaning of being. In their nature as beings they manifest in their very interplay and relatedness their belonging to an interpretation of being in which they appear as derivatives not as ontological primitives. Their significance for scientific study reveals itself on an ontic level on which ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ are naturalised as a basic frame in which the world is represented. In such a naturalisation an interpretation of the meaning of being has already been undertaken.

CR is therefore not proposing a renewed focus on ontology (in the sense of scrutinising the meaning of being relied upon in IR) but exhibits an always already posited understanding of the meaning of being manifested in scientific enquiry which itself is never questioned or scrutinised. If we take the call for a consideration of ontology in IR seriously it seems we have to cut through the seemingly fundamental and given ontological endeavour of delineating beings for scientific enquiry and relate back to scrutinising the meaning of being itself before we can proceed with identifying beings. Initially the question cannot be ‘What beings are there?’ but should start with an understanding of what the meaning of being is.

Critical Realism and the shadow of language

Apart from the fact that the ground on which scientific observation takes place is itself not timelessly secured, a further element CR neglects is the role and nature of language. Concomitant to the objectifications of objects and the projection of ‘regional ontologies’ which underlies all scientific endeavours language is itself ascribed a specific role which again mirrors the core assumptions inherent in encountering the world as vorhanden (present-at-hand). Very much in line with the conflation of entities and the being of entities language appears as a neutral toolset that allows us to make ‘objective’ statements about the world.Footnote ⁴⁹ These statements simply describe and capture brute facts that are what they are independent of what we make of them subsequently. And indeed following the general logic of CR this seems necessary as the claim that beings exist independent of human involvement implies a purely designative role for language. If language would be more than simply designative the emergence of objects would again move dangerously close to a dependency on the human observer.

By distinguishing, however, between entities and the being of entities, language suddenly acquires a much more complex nature and function. Language ‘points things out “as” what they are by revealing them in their being … In language, the event of being takes place in the ontological difference such that beings appear in their being, that is, intelligibly, as what they are taken to be by human understanding.’Footnote ⁵⁰

This understanding of the nature and function of language accommodates the major claim followed throughout this article that we have to accept that the act of observing and stating objects of study is always already immersed in methodological and epistemological schemes. What constitutes a stone, for instance, is determined by size, shape, weight, or composition. All these are not pre-scientific notions but are established as a toolset to systematise objects in specific categories. They are part of the ground plan that is secured in advance and thereby they form part of the understanding we bring to the observations we make. The same holds for unobservable objects such as states. What constitutes statehood is not universally given and necessary across contexts but is indeed established through specific scientific practices within the wider community of human beings. Identifying ‘something’ as a state is not simply an act of description. It rather brings to bear pre-established categories of judgment upon the world and thereby establishes the being of the entity in question, but not the entity itself.

What enables and constrains human beings is not the ontological object as such then but the very categories we use to grasp them within an already given understanding of being manifested in scientific activity. Having different characteristics of statehood at a specific time within a specific context allows us to separate states from non-states. This separation as such, however, is not simply an act of neutral description but creates a social reality for me the inquirer and the human beings in the object under question. Naming an entity a state automatically transfers certain rights, duties, and characteristics onto this object, for instance the right of sovereignty (which itself only arises out of a process of meaning formation and remains historically contingent). There is simply no way to decide preconceptually what a state is.

This argument by no means implies that we fall back to the same position which CR rightly criticised, that is, the position that stipulates that epistemological and methodological questions are prior to ontological ones and therefore that the objects of study are at the mercy of human consciousness. It rather seems that the whole debate about what is prior to what seems to be mistaken. Critical realists rightly criticise the epistemological foundationalism involved in making everything mind-dependent. Equally, however, it seems problematic to simply shift to an ontological foundationalism that seemingly allows us to identify objects without reference to epistemological and methodological tools. Rather, it seems to be the case that ontology and epistemology are inextricably interwoven.Footnote ⁵¹ The content of the realist/anti-realist debate and the concomitant problem of the reality of the world is hereby transcended ‘insofar as “world” means the realm of human intelligibility, that is, the ontologically determinate site where beings come to presence, it captures the antirealist thesis that what is outside human involvement is unintelligible. Yet insofar as “world” refers to the cosmos, that totality of extant entities, as in the claim that the cosmos existed before human being inhabited earth, it implies the realist thesis that nature does not depend on human involvement for its existence.’Footnote ⁵²

By following Heidegger's distinction between entities and the being of entities the ‘problem of reality’ collapses into a contingent problematique arising out of an always already posited meaning of being and its derivative structuring of a ground on which science can proceed.