Reclaiming America’s Epistemic Spine: Why Realism Still Matters in 2025

America’s public discourse, political landscape, and way of life in 2025 face a crisis of truth. In an era often described as "post-truth," the very idea of objective reality is frequently challenged by relativism and constructivism. Competing ideologies promote fragmented "narratives" instead of shared facts, and many individuals retreat into echo chambers where "my truth" eclipses the truth. This white paper argues that to renew America’s intellectual and civic foundations, we must reclaim our epistemic spine – a backbone of commitment to realism and objective truth. Realism in epistemology (the study of knowledge) is the belief that a reality exists independent of our minds, can be reliably detected by the senses, and that truth consists in our beliefs corresponding to that reality. As Aristotle famously put it: "To say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true" (Metaphysics, 1011b25). In other words, truth means aligning our statements with the facts. This correspondence view of truth has been a bedrock of Western thought for millennia and remains crucial today. A realist orientation provides a stable, coherent, and justifiable foundation for civil society, education, and public discourse, whereas relativism ultimately undermines our ability to reason together or uphold justice. Do not be misled into thinking that epistemology (or philosophy in general) is only for ivory tower discussions — as you will see in this white paper, our epistemic spine is what made our country worthwhile and unique in the world. It is worth preserving.

Over the past two centuries, Western intellectual life has been increasingly dominated by relativism and social constructivism. From Nietzsche’s claim that “there are no facts, only interpretations” (Nietzsche, 1887/1968) to the postmodern rejection of stable meaning, American culture has become saturated with competing “truths.” Today, polarized media environments present entirely different realities to different audiences, and institutions once dedicated to truth—universities, journalism, the arts—have been captured by ideological agendas that elevate narrative over evidence. This epistemic capture fragments the shared reality on which a republic depends. If truth is no longer seen as objective but instead as a product of power or perspective, then public debate becomes incoherent. Why deliberate or compromise if every claim is equally valid? In the classroom, this relativism leaves students unsure of whether knowledge is even possible. A society that no longer believes in objective truth becomes vulnerable to demagogues, since volume replaces evidence, and to tyranny, since rights lose their grounding in any stable moral reality.

To resist this descent, we must recover our realist foundations. Key figures in the Western tradition—from Aristotle and Aquinas to Reid—provide an intellectual inheritance capable of restoring our bearings. These thinkers understood that truth is not made, but discovered; that rights are not conferred by consensus, but grounded in nature; and that liberty requires a people capable of distinguishing reality from rhetoric. In the sections that follow, we trace this legacy—not as a nostalgic exercise, but as the necessary groundwork for rebuilding an American order rooted in realism, reason, and moral law.

John Locke: Natural Rights as Objective Truths

Few thinkers were more influential on early American conceptions of truth and rights than John Locke. Locke’s philosophy exemplifies Enlightenment realism. In epistemology, Locke was an empiricist: he held that all ideas and knowledge originate from experience – through sensation of an external reality and reflection on our mental operations (Locke, 1689/1996). He rejected the Cartesian notion of innate ideas and insisted the mind begins as a "white paper" or blank slate, with knowledge built up by observing the world. This perspective presupposes an objective external world that impresses itself on our senses. While Locke acknowledged that we perceive the world indirectly via ideas, he maintained that those ideas represent real things. He thus opposed extreme skepticism: it is common sense, Locke argued, that our senses generally tell us the truth about external objects – a view later expanded by Reid. Indeed, Locke described human knowledge as a perception of the truth, requiring that our ideas accurately correspond to reality. He distinguished genuine knowledge from mere preference or opinion by the degree of evidence and reason we have for it, demonstrating a clear belief in truth as something objective and discoverable.

Locke’s commitment to realism is perhaps most evident in his political philosophy, which heavily influenced many of the American Founders. He argued that certain rights and moral principles hold true universally, by nature, not by social convention. In his Two Treatises of Government, Locke (1689/1988) posited that all humans are by nature free and equal and that "people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property, that have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society." In other words, our basic rights are grounded in natural law – a moral order as real as the physical laws of nature. This was a bold realist claim about ethics and politics: moral truths (e.g., "murder is wrong," "individuals are entitled to liberty") exist objectively and universally, not merely as products of culture or preference. The notion of natural law long predated Locke, referring to "certain moral truths that applied to all people, regardless of the particular place where they lived or the agreements they had made" (Tuckness, 2020). Locke adopted this framework and gave it empirical heft by tying rights to human nature and reason. His view that legitimate government rests on respecting objective natural rights – and may be overthrown if it fails to do so – provided a philosophical backbone for the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence’s appeal to "self-evident" truths.

However, Locke’s framework also introduced conceptual fractures that diverged from the Aristotelian-Thomist Natural Law tradition that undergirded the Constitution’s realist metaphysics. First, his social contract theory framed civil society as the product of a consensual agreement among autonomous individuals emerging from a pre-political “state of nature.” While rhetorically useful against absolutism, this formulation severed political order from the teleological account of man found in Aristotle and Aquinas, where the polis (or commonwealth) is a natural outgrowth of man’s inherently social and rational nature. By making political authority contingent upon an abstract, revocable contract, Locke risked grounding law in the mutable will of individuals rather than in an objective, divinely-ordered hierarchy of ends.

Second, Locke’s blank slate (tabula rasa) epistemology treated the human mind as devoid of innate ideas, with all knowledge arising from sensory experience. This view undermines the Thomistic understanding that moral first principles (e.g., the precepts of the natural law) are naturally imprinted on the rational soul and discernible through reason because they participate in the eternal law. By rejecting innate knowledge, Locke shifted the grounding of moral certainty from participation in immutable truth to the contingencies of empirical formation—thereby leaving open the possibility that moral and political beliefs could be altered through environmental conditioning.

Together, these departures weakened the metaphysical anchoring of rights and law. Aristotelian-Thomist natural law affirms that rights are not merely constructs of agreement or products of sensory-derived notions, but are rooted in the objective telos of human nature as created and ordered by God. Locke’s modifications allowed later thinkers to reinterpret natural rights through a voluntarist or utilitarian lens, paving the way for nominalist drift in American political thought.

Thomas Reid and the Scottish Common Sense Realism Tradition

In the late 18th century, Thomas Reid (1710–1796) carried the torch of realism and (especially when merged with Locke), reinforced the epistemology of America. Reid, a Scottish philosopher and clergyman, founded what came to be known as the Scottish Common Sense Realism school. He was acting against David Hume’s radical doubts about causation, the external world, and even the self. Reid believed Hume’s skepticism – and the "way of ideas" espoused by Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley – had gone too far in distancing the mind from reality, which would cause society to spiral into oblivion. Reid argued that common sense beliefs are the foundation of knowledge: certain truths are "first principles" wired into us by nature and must be true, because virtually everyone assumes them in practice. For example, the belief in an external world of physical objects, the reliability of our senses and memory, and basic logical and moral truths are not learned by inference; they are instinctive convictions that it would be absurd to deny (Reid, 1764/1997). These principles of common sense are self-evident and "no sooner understood than they are believed"—and without them, reasoning itself would collapse.

Reid’s importance to American epistemic culture was profound, though in the current day, few even know his name. His common-sense realism was transmitted to America largely through education. Dugald Stewart, Reid’s student and successor in Edinburgh, continued to expound common sense philosophy and attracted students from England, Europe, and America, in numbers never seen before. Leading American educators and clergy in the post-Revolutionary era (such as John Witherspoon at Princeton) taught Scottish common sense philosophy as a counter to both Humean skepticism and French radical skepticism. This meant that generations of American students were trained to reconcile empiricism with moral realism, science with faith, and to reject extreme relativism. They learned, with Reid, that certain knowledge can be acquired through empirical observation of the external world and through rational reflection on self-evident truths. Matters of common sense – like the existence of objective moral duties or the trustworthiness of basic sense experience – were affirmed as the grounding for more advanced inquiry.

The relevance of Reid’s legacy in 2025 cannot be overstated. His defense of "first principles" of common sense offers an antidote to the hyper-skeptical attitudes that fuel relativism today. Where some contemporary thinkers claim that all perception is theory-laden and reality is a social construct, Reid reminds us that our shared human faculties anchor us to a common reality. We might express or interpret things differently, but we all live in the same world, and our natural beliefs (when properly functioning) reliably inform us about that world. In public discourse, this suggests we can appeal to common facts and shared evidences – they are not merely subjective "narratives." Reid’s thought encourages a civic epistemology that values plain facts, straightforward language, and widely accessible reasons, rather than esoteric theories that call reality itself into question. By returning to a common sense realism, we empower citizens to trust their eyes and ears (with critical thinking applied, of course) and not be intimidated into doubting every truth by cynical pundits or partisan spin. A society that embraces Reid’s insights will insist that evidence matters and that some truths are indeed "absurd to deny"—a much-needed backbone for our epistemically confused times.

Bridging the Philosophical Legacy to the Original American Epistemology (OAE)

Together, Locke and Reid provided more than isolated theories—they formed the dual pillars of what we call the Original American Epistemology (OAE): a civic framework grounded in empirical realism, common sense, and natural law. Locke established the ontological and moral basis for liberty through his empiricism and natural rights theory, while Reid safeguarded the psychological and rational preconditions for truth-seeking and moral reasoning through his defense of first principles. Their ideas were not abstract academic contributions; they were embedded into America’s founding logic—its institutions, its constitutional design, its decentralized moral culture. To deviate from them is to sever the Republic from its metaphysical and epistemological root system. As we increasingly replace natural rights with relativistic claims, and common sense with elite abstraction or ideological diktat, the entire structure of self-government begins to collapse. We lose not only our ability to reason together, but our very conception of what it means to be free, human, and accountable to a moral order that transcends power. The OAE is not a nostalgic relic; it is the essential operating system of the American experiment. Without it, the hardware of our nation—its laws, liberties, and civil discourse—will fall into ruin.

This white paper marks the beginning of the American Epistemology Institute’s (AEI) formal intellectual campaign to restore the original American epistemology. The battle ahead will be fierce, but clarity is our weapon and realism is our shield. Our goal is not nostalgia, but survival—to defend a culture rooted in truth against a tide of barbarism both foreign and domestic. This nation is not a postmodern construct. It is a covenantal order born of common sense, realism, and moral law. We must fight to preserve it and this is the start of the very same.

Godspeed.

References

Aristotle. (1998). Metaphysics (H. Lawson-Tancred, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work written ca. 350 B.C.E.)

Locke, J. (1996). An essay concerning human understanding (K. P. Winkler, Ed.). Hackett Publishing Company. (Original work published 1689)

Locke, J. (1988). Two treatises of government (P. Laslett, Ed.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1689)

Nietzsche, F. (1968). The will to power (W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Vintage. (Original work published 1887)

Reid, T. (1997). An inquiry into the human mind on the principles of common sense (D. R. Brookes, Ed.). Pennsylvania State University Press. (Original work published 1764)

Tuckness, A. (2020). Locke's political philosophy. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2020 ed.). Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/