Critical Realism and Social Justice: Moving Beyond the Fact/Value
Dichotomy to Rationally Changing Social Structures

    In this paper, I will examine Roy Bhaskar's critical realist
philosophy and argue that critical realism offers a coherent position
from which to make connections between human needs, species being, and
social justice.  More specfically, in his development of critical
realism, Bhaskar contends that empirical realist, Kantian, and some
postmodern philosophies of science create theory/practice
inconcistencies that undermine their possibility of coherently
explaining the work of science.  From, and in conjunction with, these
critiques of  natural sciences philosophies, Bhaskar turns his attention
to the human sciences, applying similar critiques which expose
theory/practice inconsistencies in Weberian notions of voluntarism,
Durkheimian notions of social determinism, and some postmodern
understandings of the social/individual node of interaction, again
pointing out the inability of any of these positions to coherently
explain social action.  From there, Bhaskar contends that, in order to
coherently explain social action, every social action presupposes a
social structure that not only enables but limits social action.  If
Bhaskar is correct, then the fact/value or is/ought dichotomy, which
traditionally keeps us from rationally claiming what we ought to do
based on historically specific material/social conditions, can be
exposed as a false dichotomy, allowing us to move from statements of
what "is" to assertions of what "ought to be" without falling into
contradiciton or circular reasoning.  As such, from a critical realist
position one can argue that social systems which partially or
universally inhibit or restrict humans from providing for their needs,
understood as grounded in our species being, are harmful, if not
self-destructive, and should either be changed, when such change is
possible, or swept away, when structural change is not possible because
that which must be changed is integral to the social structure in
question.

Donald Judd
Department of English
Pittsburg State University
316-235-4697