ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as a philosophical framework for this investigation into critical thinking. An overview of basic critical realism is presented through the analysis of what I consider its five core insights: (a) existential intransitivity, (b) depth stratification, (c) emergent stratification, (d) open-systemic causality, and (e) judgmental rationality. Critical realism is proposed as a suitable and helpful philosophical ally to Catholic Christianity, given its refutation of philosophies incompatible with the latter – namely, modernism and postmodernism, and more specifically, positivism, reductionism, determinism, and radical relativism. The conceptual tools it offers – particularly, its epistemological first principles of ontological realism, epistemic relativism, and judgmental rationality – will be used for a critical realist account of critical thinking.
