Introduction
These notes are intended to acquaint those new to Bhaskar's works with some of the basic concepts Bhaskar uses to formulate his positions, not to state the positions themselves, and I hope they will be useful as an entry point for new readers. One aim is to state the concepts as clearly as possible in order to enable new readers to orient themselves, therefore many nuances are not addressed. An attempt has been made to state the point of a concept and relate it to the philosophical tradition and/or to other of Bhaskar's concepts.
I cannot pretend to be completely successful in these aims. The material is not meant as a comprehensive glossary nor to cover the same ground as those which Bhaskar provides in Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom and Plato Etc., which vary in their difficulty. It is more in the nature of a primer.
Finally, I should stress that these notes represent my own particular background and path into critical realism and may not be entirely congenial to those with a different background, especially those who prefer historical approaches to concepts.
I welcome suggestions, corrections and criticisms regarding both accuracy, nuances, and the points of concepts. Please feel free to distribute these notes to whomever you wish, as long as they are preceded by this paragraph. This version is an incomplete draft based on my marginalia and includes page references to specific works which will be excised in later versions as I correct errors. References to The Possibility of Naturalism and Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom are lacking, because the former is unavailable to me and I have not had time to read the latter.
--Louis Irwin
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All Works by Roy Bhaskar:
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