Critical realism and the ontology of persons*

Abstract

In this article, Roy Bhaskar suggests how critical realism might facilitate the understanding of persons and improve their lives. He considers the implicit potentialities of persons and how they can achieve their potentialities (satisfy their dharma). He proposes a way to approach the movement towards the good, or eudaimonistic, society; asking how we could do things differently to better achieve circumstances that are conducive to human well-being. Bhaskar argues that we should not see persons as Cartesian egos: subjects opposed to an object world, which includes other subjects. Rather we should approach the ontology of persons in terms of the thought embodied in some southern African languages by the notion of ubuntu which means roughly ‘I am because you are’.