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This article explores the conception of realism by political science scholar Hans Morgenthau and his contribution to the scientific study of international politics in the U.S. Morgenthau's stress on the centrality of the national interest was important in the U.S. context for what it denied: that states should follow either sub-national or supra-national interests. As central to the analysis as the national interest was power. Perhaps his most famous sentence is that the main signpost that helps political realism to find its way through the landscape of international politics is the concept of interest defined in terms of power. Morgenthau's conception of realism does not lead to specific policy prescriptions or detailed propositions for empirical research.

In this essay I discuss how realism operates to constrain games, especially role-playing games, that take place in a fantasy milieu. The design of these games involves tradeoffs between two values, which are sometimes labeled "realism" and "playability". These values are ordinarily understood to be wholly independent and competing. Using resources drawn from John Rawls's conception of political theory as a search for a "realistic utopia", I show how these values can instead be understood as aspects of the more general value of creating and conceiving a realistic fantasy through the medium of game play. I also explain how realism operates differently as a constraint on tabletop role-playing games from how it operates in realistic video games and live-action role-playing.

Political realism remains a powerful theoretical framework for thinking about international relations, including the war on terrorism. For Morgenthau and other realists, foreign policy is a matter of national interest defined in terms of power. Some writers view this tenet as weakening, if not severing, realism's link with morality. I take up the contrary view that morality is embedded in realist thought, as well as the possibility of realism being thinly and thickly moralised depending on the moral psychology of the agents. I argue that a prima facie case can be made within a thinly moralised realism for a relatively weak ally like Bosnia to enter the war on terrorism. An inflationary model of morality, however, explains how the moral horror of genocide in an ally's past may lead to a thickened moralised realism such that allied policy-makers question their country's entry into the war.

Both within political theory and International Relations (IR), recent scholarship has reflected on the nature and limits of political realism. In this article, we return to the thermonuclear revolution and the debates it spurred about what was real and possible in global politics. We argue that a strand of oppositional and countercultural thinking during this period, which we refer to as realist radicalism, has significant theoretical and practical relevance for current scholarship on political realism. Indeed, debates during the thermonuclear revolution speak to questions about the nature of realism and whether it is possible to develop a realism that is attuned to progressive or emancipatory ambitions. By focusing mainly on two radical American intellectuals - C. Wright Mills and Lewis Mumford - we show how their responses to the thermonuclear, superpower standoff challenged conventional understanding of realism and utopianism. By harnessing the concept of the imagination, they called into question pre-existing conceptions about politics and reality. The contribution of the article is twofold. First, we argue that realist political theory and IR should pay more attention to thinkers that are not conventionally regarded as canonical but whose writings and politics interrogated the limits and potential of political realism. Second, we demonstrate that the work of such public intellectuals and their calls for cultivating the imagination connect directly to current debates about political realism, including its statist bend and its (purported) conservatism.

Work included in a group exhibition at Charlie Smith Gallery, London curated by Juan Bolivar and John Stark. Exhibting artists include: Juan Bolivar, Dan Coombs, Graham Crowley, Karen David, Nathan Eastwood, Geraint Evans, John Greenwood, Sigrid Holmwood, Kate Lyddon, Maharishi x Rebecca & Mike, John Salt, John Stark. The term 'Anti-Social Realism', which acts as this exhibitions title, is not one that is commonly understood. It is intended to pose questions such as: is 'revolutionary' art a viable possibility today? What does it mean to be (anti) social in an increasingly interconnected but physically separated society? Can we, through archaic practices such as painting and sculpture, engage with notions of 'social realism' now presented on a daily basis through the new silver-screen veneer of the digital age? In response, this exhibition attempts to pose pictorial possibilities and create tensions through the selected artworks, tackling notions of contemporary realism and in turn offering us a distant echo of a political reality. The wry misnomer of the exhibition title slips between many interwoven threads, simultaneously conjuring up images of 'anti-social behaviour orders' (ASBO), anarchist riots, or the solitary artist locked away from the world attempting to connect on a higher level. In this light, the exhibiting artists are presented as 'social mystics' and it could be said that their work operates by a means of turning inwards to create social radiation.

Die Dissertation führt den Begriff des Schauerrealismus (gothic realism) als Werkzeug zur Analyse explizit politischer Gegenwartsliteratur ein. Hierbei thematisiert die Arbeit die kulturelle Arbeit des realistischen Gegenwartsromans und begreift Konventionen der Schauerliteratur als Ausdrucksmittel politischer Aktualität und als kulturelle Marker einer als krisenhaft empfundenen Gegenwart. Gleichzeitig leistet die Arbeit so einen kritischen Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen Periodisierungsdebatte im Bereich der amerikanischen Literatur, indem sie an Hand detaillierter Fallstudien die literarische Methodik und kulturell-politische Arbeit realistischer Romane herausarbeitet, die sich im Spannungsfeld zwischen einem Selbstbekenntnis zum Realismus und dem bewussten Einsatz von Konventionen klassischer Schauerliteratur einer klaren Periodisierungsabsicht entziehen. Basierend auf einem Textkorpus der Romane The Dead Zone und Cujo von Stephen King schlägt die Arbeit den Bogen zum gegenwärtigen realistischen Werk von Cara Hoffman und Julia Keller, um herauszuarbeiten, wie schauerliterarische Tropen als realistisches Ausdrucksmittel einen essentiellen Beitrag zur politischen und kulturellen Arbeit amerikanischer Gegenwartsliteratur leisten. ; The dissertation introduces the term "gothic realism" as a tool to analyze explicitly political contemporary literature. The work discusses the cultural work of the realist contemporary novel and conceptualizes conventions of gothic fiction as a means to express political actuality and as an indicator of a zeitgeist characterized by crisis. At the same time, the work critically contributes to the current periodization debate in American literature by offering detailed readings of the literary method and cultural work of realist novels that veer between a self-professed realism and the explicit use of gothic convention. By doing so, these texts escape clear efforts of periodization. Based on the Stephen King novels The Dead Zone and Cujo, the work theorizes and reads contemporary novels by Cara Hoffman and Julia Keller to show how tropes of gothic fiction as a realist means of representation fundamentally contribute to the cultural and political work of contemporary American literature.

The objective of presenting this article is to analyze between Thai's film and Thai society in political crisis, to study the development and trend of the film which reflects society in Thailand from political crisis of 14 October 1973 and the present day political crisis using a comparative study of the two era, both the similarities and differences in the film reflects the society in an era of change.

In the aftermath of gross human rights abuses, when, if at all, should we forego legal accountability? Human rights scholars debated this question in the 1980s and 1990s, in what was referred to as the "peace versus justice" debate. The "justice" side won the day among human rights advocates, among whom the dominant position is that legal accountability is a necessary response to atrocity and cannot be limited by political considerations (a position this Article terms "human rights absolutism'). However, this question has resurfaced in the twenty-first century, in intense debates with interlocutors outside the field of human rights. Faced with the development of international criminal justice, Alien Tort Statute litigation, and regional human rights court jurisprudence on the right to a remedy, courts, state officials, and conservative scholars argue that legal accountability should be limited to avoid hampering states' control of their internal affairs and international relations (a position this Article terms "sovereigntism"). Some scholars take a middle ground and argue that legal responses to gross human rights abuses should be limited only to avoid harm to peace or democratic decision-making. However, the latter have not yet offered a persuasive justification for their position nor a rationale for distinguishing peace and democratic decision-making from other values advanced by sovereigntists as limits to accountability. This Article offers a new middle ground between sovereigntism and human rights absolutism, under a position it terms "human rights realism." Drawing on American legal realism and grounded in human rights values, this approach mandates limiting legal accountability to avoid those consequences that threaten certain core human rights, and the Article identifies armed conflict and economic inequality as relevant consequences. This approach overcomes both human rights absolutists' denial of the politics of accountability mechanisms and sovereigntists' subordination of accountability to values ...

'Politics comes first'. This commitment to an approach to normative theorizing that avoids controversial moralistic assumptions lies at the heart of Richard Bellamy's defence of republican intergovernmentalism. However, a closer analysis of his argument for the primacy of politics reveals a tension in his account: In seeking to avoid a moralist approach, he seems to be torn between a Kantian Republicanism and a Williamsian Realism–while still holding on to some moralist intuitions. I show how this creates ambiguities on each of the three steps of his core argument, the distinction between legitimacy and justice, the defence of non-domination as the standard of legitimacy and the institutional proposal of a republican intergovernmentalism. And I propose to solve them by strengthening the Kantian Republicanism side of his approach, which, or so I will argue, can walk the fine line between moralism and realism. While–on my reading–this Kantian Republicanism already forms the heart of Bellamy's account, it would require adjusting the realist conceptual framework on which he relies. And so my proposal is meant as an invitation to engage the underlying and intriguing question that Bellamy's account raises: in what sense and to what extent is republicanism–whether of a Kantian or any other kind–a political political theory?.

It is a simplification of Raymond Aron´s thought to consider him as a mere neo-liberal political thinker. The French sociologist, a well-known political realist, took part in the famous controversy about Machiavellianism that was Aron´s intellectual watershed from the Forties. Starting from that controversy the aim of the present paper is to inquire into his contribution to the so-called "moderate Machiavellianism", whose Arcanum is that it is not always possible to choose the optimal means to face the right political action. Machiavellianism is not a merely scientific or epistemological question, but something that deeply determines all political actions. ; La presentación de Raymond Aron como un escritor político neoliberal constituye una simplificación de su pensamiento. El sociólogo francés, que pertenece a la tradición del realismo político, tuvo una destacada intervención en la famosa polémica sobre el maquiavelismo que marcó un punto de inflexión en su pensamiento. Este artículo examina su contribución a esa inagotable polémica intelectual desde los años 40 y constata, finalmente, su encuadramiento en el denominado "maquiavelismo moderado", cuyo arcano político es que, en política, no siempre se pueden elegir los medios de la acción. El maquiavelismo no es, en este sentido, un asunto científico o epistemológico, sino que determina profundamente toda acción política.

In this intervention, I reflect on Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism as a work better known for its title, as a phrase or slogan, than for the substance of the book. While indicative of the success of Fisher's diagnosis, one borne out through the experience of capitalist crisis and austerity, I want to turn to the problem of the alternative and the future that was a constant concern of Fisher's writing. In particular, probing the "realism" in "capitalist realism," I want to consider Fisher's interest in the breakdown of capitalist realism. This "breakdown" is indicated negatively by psychic suffering and collapse, but also positively by the cultural forms of the weird and eerie as markers of a consciousness beyond "capitalist realism," the mapping of capitalist crisis, and the futures that might positively emerge through breakdown. At stake in the substance of Fisher's work, I suggest, lies a class phenomenology concerned with not only grasping the suffering inflicted by capitalist culture, but also the possibilities of a breakdown of realism that would imagine a future oriented to a new collective experience beyond the existing limits of psychic and social formations.

The present article aims to show the fundamental features of Realism in the international relations theory, from the thinking of some classical thinkers as they are the most prominent of the XX and XXI centuries. Based on an interpretative exercise, the text concludes affirming the importance of this theory in the contemporary international system analysis and the possibilities of its applicability as a part of case studies about the International Order. ; El presente artículo tiene como objetivo presentar los rasgos fundamentales del Realismo en la teoría de las relaciones internacionales, desde el pensamiento de algunos pensadores clásicos más destacados del siglo XX y XXI. A partir de un ejercicio interpretativo, el texto concluye en la afirmación de la importancia de esta teoría en el análisis del sistema internacional contemporáneo y las posibilidades de su aplicabilidad como parte de los estudios de caso sobre lo que los teóricos han denominado el Orden Internacional.

Entre les diferents tendències de la filosofia contemporània, l'anomenat "nou realisme" és probablement un dels més interessants. El "Nou Realisme" no és simplement un "retorn" a la realitat, un reconeixement banal i trivial de l'existència del món extern. Més aviat, és un moviment filosòfic polèmic (i per tant polític) contra el monopoli teòric, especialment en la filosofia continental, governada pel discurs filosòfic postmodern. Per tant, el Nou Realisme és una espècie d'antagonista filosòfic de la postmodernitat. No obstant això, no podem reduir el Nou Realisme a la simple crítica de la postmodernitat. De fet, el Nou Realisme és un moviment filosòfic multifacètic i estratificat. Hi ha molts Realismes Nous diferents. Aquests Nous Realismes inclouen diferents autors, línies i camins d'investigació, units per la crítica de la postmodernitat, però distingits de moltes maneres. L'objectiu d'aquesta contribució és doble. En primer lloc, es rastrejarà breument la història teòrica del Nou Realisme. En segon lloc, es posarà l'accent en les temàtiques més importants del nou realisme i, al mateix temps, en les diferents teories filosòfiques (Ferraris, Meillassoux, Gabriel, Boghossian, Harman, Gratton) desenvolupades sota la denominació de "Nou Realisme". ; Among the different tendencies in contemporary philosophy, the so called "new realism" is probably one of the most interesting. The "New Realism" is not simply a "back" to the reality, a banal and trivial recognition of the existence of the external world. Rather, it is a polemic (and therefore political) philosophical movement against the theoretical monopoly, especially in continental philosophy, ruled by the postmodern philosophical discourse. Therefore, New Realism is a sort of philosophical antagonist of postmodernity. However, we cannot flatten the New Realism on the critique of postmodernity. Indeed, New Realism is a multifaceted and stratified philosophical movement. There are several different New Realisms. These New Realisms include different authors, lines and paths of research, joined by the critique of postmodernity, but distinguished in many ways. The aim of this contribution is double. Firstly, I will trace briefly the theoretical history of New Realism. Secondly, I will focus my paper on the most important topics of new realism, and at the same time on the different philosophical theories (Ferraris, Meillassoux, Gabriel, Boghossian, Harman, Gratton) developed within the name of "New Realism". ; Entre las diferentes tendencias de la filosofía contemporánea, el llamado "nuevo realismo" es probablemente uno de los más interesantes. El "Nuevo Realismo" no es simplemente un "regreso" a la realidad, un reconocimiento banal y trivial de la existencia del mundo externo. Más bien, es un movimiento filosófico polémico (y por lo tanto político) contra el monopolio teórico, especialmente en la filosofía continental, gobernada por el discurso filosófico posmoderno. Por lo tanto, el Nuevo Realismo es una especie de antagonista filosófico de la posmodernidad. Sin embargo, no podemos reducir el Nuevo Realismo a la simple crítica de la posmodernidad. De hecho, el Nuevo Realismo es un movimiento filosófico multifacético y estratificado. Hay muchos Realismos Nuevos diferentes. Estos Nuevos Realismos incluyen diferentes autores, líneas y caminos de investigación, unidos por la crítica de la posmodernidad, pero distinguidos de muchas maneras. El objetivo de esta contribución es doble. En primer lugar, se rastreará brevemente la historia teórica del Nuevo Realismo. En segundo lugar, se pondrá el acento en las temáticas más importantes del nuevo realismo y, al mismo tiempo, en las diferentes teorías filosóficas (Ferraris, Meillassoux, Gabriel, Boghossian, Harman, Gratton) desarrolladas bajo la denominación de "Nuevo Realismo".

Political idealism has prevailed over economic realism in the EU decision process. As a result, today's Eurozone is a puzzle with too many missing pieces. Given the severity of the crisis, policymakers would be well advised to take both structural and pragmatic measures to preserve the Eurozone, as proposed in the paper. Policymakers should also stop using the self-destructive rhetoric of blaming finance for the problems they have contributed to create. Of course, finance may be blamed for failing to internalize the negative externalities it generates on the economy, but until investors believe that they are being taken seriously by the Eurozone, they will easily find other places to invest their funds. Although the discussion about the right balance between fiscal rectitude and support for demand is useful, the fundamental challenge for Europe is to rethink the 'welfare state' model that has prevailed over the past 50 years or so. Political idealism can no longer ignore the significant intergenerational economic constraints that Europe faces today in a world in which it can no longer dictate the terms of exchange. What Europe desperately needs is a new and realistic vision for the 21st century.

Political idealism has prevailed over economic realism in the EU decision process. As a result, today's Eurozone is a puzzle with too many missing pieces. Given the severity of the crisis, policymakers would be well advised to take both structural and pragmatic measures to preserve the Eurozone, as proposed in the paper. Policymakers should also stop using the self-destructive rhetoric of blaming finance for the problems they have contributed to create. Of course, finance may be blamed for failing to internalize the negative externalities it generates on the economy, but until investors believe that they are being taken seriously by the Eurozone, they will easily find other places to invest their funds. Although the discussion about the right balance between fiscal rectitude and support for demand is useful, the fundamental challenge for Europe is to rethink the 'welfare state' model that has prevailed over the past 50 years or so. Political idealism can no longer ignore the significant intergenerational economic constraints that Europe faces today in a world in which it can no longer dictate the terms of exchange. What Europe desperately needs is a new and realistic vision for the 21st century.