Roy Bhaskar

Roy Bhaskar (1944-2014) was a British philosopher who developed critical realism, a philosophical approach that significantly influenced debates about God and spirituality. Initially focused on the philosophy of science, Bhaskar's work evolved to encompass spiritual dimensions, particularly in his later "philosophy of meta-Reality." His critical realist ontology distinguished between the real, actual, and empirical domains of existence, providing a framework that some theologians adopted to articulate a realist understanding of God beyond both naive realism and anti-realist approaches. In works like "From East to West" (2000) and "Reflections on Meta-Reality" (2002), Bhaskar explicitly engaged with concepts of God, non-duality, and transcendence, arguing for the reality of spiritual dimensions while maintaining critical distance from traditional theism. His philosophy offered resources for understanding divine action and religious experience within a stratified, emergentist ontology.