Realism (n.) and idealism have, with equal thoroughness, missed what the Greeks meant by truth.
Realism (n.) cannot even be called untenable, because it has never pressed forward into the dimension where tenability can be decided.
Realism (n.) agrees that the world is there but makes the mistake of thinking it needs — and can get — a proof.
Realism (n.) in its blind form would like to be more realistic than the things themselves are, since it misreads the phenomenon of the world.
Realism (n.) was first put in the position of having to prove that the outer world exists — of having to rescue beings — by Descartes.
Realism (n.) already talks the language of metaphysics: the real as sensuous, the ideal as nonsensuous.
Realism (n.) is a label the Greeks never needed: Aristotle never denied the external world, but neither he nor Plato, Heraclitus or Parmenides ever affirmed it, let alone proved it.
Realism (n.) of the nineteenth century thrives entirely on absolute idealism; it is not a return to actuality but a collapse into an unphilosophical reading of idealism.