This is the website of The Paradox of Realism Research Group, Institute of Political Science, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
The focus of our research is political realism and our concern is twofold. On the one hand, we study a historical phenomenon: the emergence of a post-communist type of "political realism" in the Hungarian intellectual life. And, on the other hand, we would like to discuss some theoretical questions of contemporary political realism of Bernard Williams, John Gray, Raymond Geuss, Matt Sleat, Mark Philp and others. Especially we are interested in the hitherto neglected epistemological aspects of realism, and at this point, our two main areas of research happily overlap. The problems of political knowledge in a specific local context made us more conscious about the importance of the epistemology of political realism in general.
In the next months we are going to publish a series of blog posts about political realism in general and the goals of our research project in particular.
What is political realism and why should we bother? These will be our first questions to answer. We hope that you will find our short comments of some interest.
Zoltán Gábor Szűcs