Historical-Dialectical Realism

A philosophical position that combines dialectical materialism’s emphasis on change, contradiction, and historicity with a robust realism: there is a material world independent of our thoughts, but our knowledge of it is always mediated, partial, and evolving through practice. Unlike naive realism, it acknowledges that observation is theory‑laden and that reality appears in historical forms; unlike relativism, it maintains that some accounts are better than others in terms of their practical adequacy and explanatory power. Historical‑dialectical realism underpins the Marxist epistemology of “concrete universal” and “reproduction of the concrete in thought.” It argues that reality is not static but processual—things are what they are in virtue of their development and internal contradictions.

Historical-Dialectical Realism Example: “She defended historical‑dialectical realism against both positivism and postmodernism: there is a real world, but we only grasp it through historical practices, and those practices themselves change the world and our concepts simultaneously.”

Historical-Dialectical Realism by Abzugal May 1, 2026