Realistic capacity of M. Gabriel’s «neutral realism

Philosophy

Abstract

The article concerns Markus Gabriel’s philosophical conception — ontology and main theses of so-called «neutral realism», while questioning the most significant arguments of the German philosopher and considering a few other positions that it has parallels with. For instance, with Frege’s conception of meaning, in which the notion of sense plays an important role, being one of the elements of the so-called «semantic triangle». Or with the notion of sense in post-structuralism, particularly in works by Derrida, who assumed sense as the horizon of the world, yet rejected any reality beyond it. Among others, G. Harman’s object-oriented philosophy and L. Bryant’s flat ontology appear to be to some extent relevant for comparing them with «neutral realism»: realism as a crucial point and anti-hierarchy of ontology seem to be a common place for each of them; however, the definition of reality and existence in each conception differs essentially. Giving a brief overview of conceptual solutions supposed to label Gabriel’s philosophy as «new realism», the paper provides analysis of the notion of the «field of sense», as well as several ontological principles of the aforementioned conception: neutrality, univocality of being, and antiessentialism. A polemic interest is drawn by the problematic understanding of existence in Gabriel’s ontology. There can also be seen a problem with reaching positive results of Gabriel’s realistic program, which is eventually supposed to give some sort of knowledge and explanation of what is real. The paper ends with some critical arguments (for instance, concerning an ambiguity of Gabriel’s ontology, in which the pluralistic and unifying strategies of defining any beings tend to intertwine with one another), thus calling into question the initial realistic tasks of Gabriel’s philosophical project.