Abstract

Nicholas Rescher’s work can be deemed as the most serious endeavor at both reviving the idealist perspective within contemporary analytic philosophy and making it compatible with a scientifically oriented outlook on reality. It can be argued, however, that Rescher’s conceptual idealism cannot be defined as a “true” idealism because, while adopting an idealist stance at the epistemological level, he nevertheless endorses a clear realist position at the ontological one, and this means that a non-dogmatic realism can actually be compatible with his position. Furthermore, his particular brand of idealism gives rise to a rather flexible system, which can face criticisms without giving up its basic premises. In the present paper I would like to clarify—and possibly deepen—these remarks taking into account, besides two Rescher’s well-known volumes on conceptual idealism and scientific realism, a more recent paper of his also devoted to the theme of conceptual idealism. I believe in fact that the issues raised by Rescher in these works are fundamental for both a correct understanding of the current realism/anti-realism debate in metaphysics and the philosophy of science, and for the clarification as well of the manifest “idealistic turn” that took place within analytic philosophy in the last few decades.