Founded in 2019 by John Boyer, Brian Kemple, Francisco Plaza, and Daniel Wagner—who all attended the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, in Houston TX—Reality is an open access philosophy journal with roots in the Thomistic tradition, though branches in many other traditions as well.  The essence of Thomism is the continual and on-going synthesis of truth, wherever and whenever it is found.  As a tradition, therefore, it is non-exclusionary and non-sectarian, open to ideas from all traditions that share its common realist foundation: human knowledge is not a fiction of the mind or mere description of experience, but the true grasp of what has an intelligible existence irreducible to the mind’s contributions.

What is Realism?

From the Editorial Introduction to Vol.1, no.1:

Reality, to put it simply, pertains to and signifies what is, and to things actually existing in the world. Realism, what many philosophers would now call an epistemological theory, in the broadest of terms, means that (i) there is reality—that things actually exist in the world—and (ii) that we can comprehend and express true (or conversely false) statements/propositions about this reality.

Realism, in this broad sense, is a perennial philosophy having its source in antiquity and including, but not limited to, such a broad range of thinkers as Socrates (469/70-399 B.C.), Plato (427-347 B.C.), Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), St. Augustine (354-430), St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274) and the many thinkers of his school, especially John Poinsot (1589-1644), as well as philosophers like Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Edith Stein (1889-1942), Karol Wojtyła (1920-2005), and many others.[1]  Common to these monumental figures is the doctrine that thought and language are determined by existing things in the world through real relations and thoughts and words are capable of expressing true meaning about these things.

They serve, therefore, as an inspiration and a guiding light for our own conduct in this journal, for we share their commitment to a realist perspective.

---

[1] This list is meant to be neither comprehensive nor indisputable, and thoughtfully articulate disputations are most welcome as submissions to Reality.