ABSTRACT
The definitive meaning of anthropism for Bhaskar is to think that human beings are the centre and focus of the universe, and to understand the universe in the image of human beings. He uses anthropism to indicate the fallacy of ‘the analysis or definition of being in terms of (some or other attribute of) human beings’.7 For Bhaskar, while the Copernican revolution pulled the earth out of the centre of the cosmos, Western philosophy continued to place human beings in that position. Philosophical modernism – the combination of the isolated atomistic individual and abstract actualist universality – is the outcome of this revolution, and postmodernism – the sacrifice of the moment of unity and universality – is a ‘fear-based’ reaction to it.8
