Realisme

Realism, known as realisme in Dutch, is a term used across arts and philosophy to describe approaches that aim to represent subjects truthfully, without idealization or fantasy. It denotes an orientation toward the ordinary and the verifiable, with emphasis on concrete detail and social context.

In the arts, realism refers to movements that foreground everyday life and social reality. In 19th-century France, Realism, led by figures such as Gustave Courbet and Honoré Daumier, rejected Romantic subjectivity and idealized history in favor of contemporary life, ordinary people, and direct observation. Dutch and Flemish genre painting, and later naturalist currents, contributed to this sensibility. In literature, realist writers such as Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky pursued verisimilitude, nuanced character development, and social critique over heroic or fantastical plots. Realism also overlaps with naturalism and social realism, which intensify the focus on environment, determinism, and class relations.

In philosophy, realism is a core position claiming that some aspects of reality exist independently of our ideas or perceptions. Variants include scientific realism, which defends that scientific theories describe a mind-independent world; moral realism, which holds that there are objective moral facts; and epistemological realism, which asserts that knowledge is possible under certain conditions. Realism remains influential in contemporary art, film, and cultural criticism, where it is used to describe works that aim for credible representation and skepticism toward ornament or abstraction.