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Realism
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Realism is the label given to the traditional orthodoxy in political approaches to understanding international relations. It is conventional to counterpose realist thinking to idealism. Realism dominated the discipline in the decades following the Second World War. It claims an intellectual heritage going back to Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau. Post-war realism was dominated by the writing of E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, and John Herz. A revival under the label neorealism started in the late 1970s led by the work of Kenneth N. Waltz.
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Within the ambit of contemporary discussions, naive Realism was the label for any unquestioning belief that things in reality correspond exactly to human cognition of them. Expressly meant as a prephilosophical attitude, naive Realism can hardly be included under philosophical procedures. Yet its appropriateness to the man in the street has ... been widely challenged; for the ordinary man is keenly interested in distinguishing critically between reality and figments of cognition and is continually doing so in ordinary life. He does not proceed, however, as did the aforementioned Realisms: he does not first regard the object in terms of its status in cognition and then explore its relation to reality. But to come under the notion as introduced by the Realists, naive Realism must be explained in terms of the cognitional relation--e.g., as one of the "three typical theories of the knowledge relation." It is, accordingly, a philosophical category, though historians and controversialists shun the listing of recognized philosophers under such a title.
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Realism had profound effects on fiction from places as far-flung as Russia and the Americas. The novel, which had been born out of the romance as a more or less fantastic narrative, settled into a realistic mode which is still dominant today. Aside from genre fiction such as fantasy and horror, we expect the ordinary novel today to be based in our own world, with recognizably familiar types of characters endowed with no supernatural powers, doing the sorts of things that ordinary people do every day. It is easy to forget that this expectation is only a century and a half old, and that the great bulk of the world's fiction before departed in a wide variety of ways from this standard, which has been applied to film and television as well. Even comic strips now usually reflect daily life. Repeated revolts against this standard by various postmodernist and magical realist varieties of fiction have not dislodged the dominance of realism in fiction.
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In philosophy Realism has a somewhat different meaning. Realist philosophy is a way of thinking about the world in which things have an existence even if no one is studying them (looking, hearing, smelling, touching them). This was different from older philosophers who said that things only exist because of people who are aware of them. For example: beauty only exists because someone sees something that they think is beautiful. A realist philosopher might say that beauty is there whether anyone sees it or not.
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Realism ... refers to a mid-19th century cultural movement with its roots in France, where it was a very popular art form around the mid to late 1800s. It came about with the introduction of photography - a new visual source that created a desire for people to produce things that look “objectively realâ€. Realism was heavily against romanticism, a genre dominating French literature and artwork in the mid 19th century. Undistorted by personal bias, Realism believed in the ideology of objective reality and revolted against exaggerated emotionalism. Truth and accuracy became the goals of many Realists.
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The Realism movement was active from 1830 to 1870 and is ... known as the Realist School. The movement discarded the previous traditional styles and formulas of Neoclassicism and Romanticism. The Realist artist portrays subjects in the most straightforward manner possible without idealizing them, and without following previous art theories. The earliest works from the Realist movement arose in the 18th century as a reaction against Neoclassicism and Romanticism. The works of Copley and Goya are an example of the early influences on Realism. The period was in full swing by the mid 19th century when artists became anxious with the influence of the Academies.
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