A vitalist critique of Critical Realism

The paper compares Whitehead's Process Philosophy with Critical Realism, arguing that the former offers a more comprehensive philosophical frame for heterodox political economy than the latter on ontological, epistemological and ethico-political grounds. It argues that Critical Realism, in building on post-war Epistemological debates amongst Analytical philosophers, reduces all of the non-philosophical conditions of philosophy-science, art, love, and politics-to that of science, per se. Furthermore, it contends that Critical Realism exposes question of epistemology to a further reduction insofar as questions of truth are interpreted in terms of the "logic of scientific discovery". In contrast, due to its reliance upon the Spinozan metaphysical tradition, Whitehead's non-organic Vitalism can avail itself of both Spinoza's hermeneutic "critique of ideology" and his activist and collective political philosophy.