Following the Austrian Federal President’s socio-politically important call to “make your bubble burst”, this book undertakes nothing less than an attempt to do justice to Karl Raimund Popper’s credo, to make philosophy effective – which was pointing the way for Friedrich Wallner’s development of the epistemological Viennese School of Constructive Realism (CR). In the spirit of CR, making philosophy effective by bursting our bubbles means first and foremost making readers aware of the (sub)cultural conditionality in relation to our ways of constructing reality and inviting them to leave well-trodden paths of thought and thus gain (intellectual) space for expanded scope for action. For this purpose, long-time companions from different phases of the development of CR, as well as current research colleagues from all over the world, have been invited to shed light on different aspects of Prof. Wallner’s oeuvre from several disciplinary and cultural perspectives. The nineteen contributors from Asia and Europe as well as North and South America explain and evaluate Wallner’s work and show the numerous fields of application and reveal possibilities for further development; not least by pointing out the one or other vagueness of CR as well as by referring to some overlaps with other schools of thought. In order to facilitate further discussions concerning CR, the appendix offers a selected bibliography to help readers find their way through the wide field of Friedrich, respectively Fritz (G.) Wallner’s publications.
About the author: Jan Brousek, born 1979, holds a PhD in philosophy of science and is a university lecturer and independent trainer as well as a shiatsu therapist. He studied philosophy, sociology and comparative religion at the universities of Vienna, Macerata (IT) and Calgary (CA) focusing on the topics of interculturality and peace studies. In his dissertation, he critically examined the epistemological shortcomings of conflict resolution from the perspective of Constructive Realism. Referring to this, he has been propagating a “relational” concept of commitment which he since then has tried to apply to other research fields, especially those of politics and medicine. In this context, he co-edited the bilingual volume Slovenija-Österreich: Befreiendes Erinnern – Osvobajajo e spominjanje (Drava) as well as Constructive Realism and Chinese Medicine (libri nigri 81) and published several related papers, including peer-reviewed ones, such as: “The Concept of Peace Region as Alternative to (Traditional) Political Autonomy – Experiences from the Project ‘Building the Peace-Region Alps-Adriatic’” (Treatises and Documents 81) and “Die Landkarte ist nicht die Landschaft – oder: eine nicht-newtonische Annäherung an Akupunktur” (Polylog 45).
Copyright © 2025 by Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH