I’ve read three books by Dr. Ferraris reviewed here in order of my reading. Of the three the first, “Introduction to New Realism”, was the best read. The second, his “Manifesto of New Realism” is specifically a comparison between New Realism and Antirealism. The third book, “Positive Realism” is an extension of the Manifesto focusing on New Realism itself. Overall I think Ferraris’ work on social systems is the most innovative. I would love to read his “Documentality” which focuses on his social realism, but as yet there is no Kindle version. I’m starting something new with this post. I’ve read and reviewed multiple books by a few authors like Ferraris. Rather than multiply these postings with individual reviews and commentary, I will gather these reviews into a single post (all separate reviews with links to their books included) and comment on all of them as a group — which from a philosophy viewpoint makes sense anyway…

I’ve read books now by all three of the philosophers said to be the core of the “New Realist” school of continental philosophy, Ferraris, Meillassoux, and Harman (Harman an American but continent-ally inclined). I will have to work up an essay comparing the three one of these days, but for now I will say that of the three, Ferraris is the most straightforward and commonsensical. In fact his variation on the school name seems to be “commonsense realism”. He begins with what is apparently real, physical objects of natural and artifactual kinds along with social constructs like economies or nations, and examines those properties that ground their reality in the physical — either substance, process, or both. It turns out, there is always something.

Harman simply goes too far off the object deep end. Everything, even temporary accidental relations (Ted is taller than Fred) is an object equally real. He does not say that they are equally important however, but importance here must not be construed only as “importance to humans”. I think some of what he takes to be features of his theory are distortions that amount to the very selective attention to details of behavior (what effects an object has) or composition (what an object is made from) that his theory (called “Object Oriented Ontology”) eschews. My Harman review is here.

Meillassoux retains the most continental flavor of the three. I have a Meillassoux review (“After Finitude”) up now for my take on him. He is a great example of analysis in a continental vein. Of the three authors he is the only one who ultimately gets to his version of realism (“speculative realism”) from purely continental-antirealist roots.

Introduction to New Realism —

This is a very good read if you are looking for a solid introduction to the New Realism movement in 21st century philosophy. Ferraris is at the very core of that movement which, as with most philosophical movements, also has a few variations.

The book begins with an introduction by Iain H. Grant. It is meant as a survey of a survey, but it seems muddy compared to the text by Ferraris. As it turns out, once you’ve read the text itself, the meanings of the introduction become much clearer and it becomes an excellent introduction to the introduction,

This is the first “continental philosophy” I’ve read in a while. It points to the presently fashionable anti-realism in continental and analytic philosophy stemming all the way from Kant and updated in what is called Correlationism in which the phenomenal and noumenal are at least connected to one degree or another. A recent book, the author refers to cultural phenomena from movies (The Matrix) to YouTube to illustrate some of his points.

Ferraris begins by telling us the world out there is much as we perceive it. What we take to be common sense distinctions, what contemporaries call “joints in the world”, like animals, trees, chairs, statues, stars, and galaxies are all really out there and not superimposed by mind. We perceive the joints! This is not to ignore the discoveries of science, and the present day realization that underneath all of what we perceive is a reality that can only be measured indirectly and inferred. Ferraris says this is real too. Nor does he deny that our minds project additional meaning onto what is perceived. So as concerns physics this is all pretty straight forward, genuinely “common sense” as in “Common Sense Realism”, another name for this movement. The book gets really interesting when the author moves into the social world.

Human institutions like money, marriage, traffic laws, and nations are the product of human minds. They are not “out there” in the universe independent of us. What is real (and here’s where New Realism comes back in) are the documents and recordings that serve now as the ground of these creations. Documents are everything from national constitutions, contracts, menus, and traffic tickets. They can be in any form written or electronic. What’s important is that once the record is made it exists outside of us. Unlike stars and trees of course, the record becomes worthless, just another object, if there is no one who can interpret it apart from its existence as an object. This is where the social and physical sphere differ. The foundation of the social is the recording AND the capacity of mind to interpret it.

Following the text there is an afterword in the form of an essay by Sarah De Sanctis (who is also the translator) and Vincenzo Santarcangelo which compares and contrasts the New New Realism of Ferraris with a variation called Speculative Realism. In this it does a fine job illustrating their common ground and the subtle distinction between them.

In all of this I have to give credit to the translator. Some of the sentence structure is a little less concise than it could be, but I understand that in the original Italian the sentences are much more convoluted. If the introduction is a little muddy, the main text and follow-on essay are very clear and easy to read. This book is, as it says, an introduction, and the author does not try to apply his insight everywhere, but only to cite examples helpful in illustrating the salient features of the core philosophy. Well written, and well translated.

Manifesto of New Realism —

First published a few years prior to his “Introduction to New Realism” (2015 — Also reviewed on Amazon) in 2012, this book is cast as a contrast to the dominant philosophical (more properly anti philosophical) movement, Postmodernism, it evolved to critique. New Realism can stand on its own, a more grown-up version of the realism underlying the Enlightenment. Ferraris gives it that emphasis in his later book. In the “Manifesto” he explores New Realism more historically as a response to the increasingly antirealism metaphysics and epistemologies of the 20th century (though first taking root as far back as Kant) leading to mid to late 20th century Postmodernism. He addresses Postmodernism’s metaphysics, epistemology, and their consequences for social philosophy — which includes aesthetics, ethics, and everything else having to do with human beings in a social setting. In part then this book is a critique of both Antirealism and Postmodernism from the New Realism perspective.

As goes metaphysics and epistemology Ferraris argues convincingly that the conclusions of the antirealists (his approach is towards what he calls “constructivism” which is something of a corollary of antirealism) are mostly not true here despite the presence of ambiguous cases. As concerns the social sphere, he grants much more to constructivism, but argues that this tells only half the story, the other half being the ubiquity of documentation, something that, once created by humans, becomes the independent reality underlying the persistent social arena. Constructivism engenders Postmodernism, but in the latter all trust in and reliance on “reality” collapses and philosophy consumes itself in what amounts to a “new nihilism” and even a “new solipsism”. New Realism is a good dash of cold water not only waking the self-contradictory philosopher, while providing a positive but not naive foundation on which to build.

This is a short book and a bit over-priced in my opinion, but that onus lies with the publisher and not the author or Amazon. High priced or not, it is a good book especially for setting a proper context for New Realism in relation to Postmodernism. I liked the newer “Introduction to New Realism” a bit better but there is different material here and the student of Ferraris’ work will certainly want to understand both.

Positive Realism —

This book something of an addendum to the author’s “Manifesto of New Realism”. While the former book illustrated New Realism by contrast to Postmodernism, this book moves over to a stand-alone statement of what New Realism stands for on its own beginning with the metaphysical, then moving to the epistemological and the social. As such it stands also as something of an introduction to Ferraris’ “Introduction to New Realism” written somewhat later. There is a little more focus here on New Realism’s approach to art, especially literary fiction, and a final chapter exploring what New Realism has to say about possibility, potentials that aren’t yet real. Cast in the form of a dialog this last chapter ends up being more about the fact that sometimes the line between what is independent of us (of the constructs of our minds) and what is not is sometimes blurred.

This is a short book and thankfully reasonably priced in the Kindle edition. The production is good and the translation clear and smoothly done. Ferraris has a great translator in Maria De Sanctus. Any one of these books would serve as an introduction to New Realism, each covering all the ground but written with a different focus.