Materialism opposes religion while realism opposes speculation and transcendence

Evidence

The fact is that spiritualism and materialism, in the philosophical sense of these expressions, have no significance apart from one another: they are simply two halves of the Cartesian dualism, whose radical separation has been turned into a kind of antagonism; and since then, the whole of philosophy has oscillated between these two terms without being able to pass beyond them. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 293 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

The Distinction imposed on moral philosophy was, in one important sense, inevitable because this “philosophy cannot admit the existence of true metaphysics without destroying itself.” Of course the denial of metaphysics in the name of science, or of any such entity as can determine the truth of matter, is itself a type of metaphysics, but Guénon choses for it the less-charitable term “superstition.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 294 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

If humanism is the great sine qua non of Western political and cultural life—larger than a discourse, experienced as more intrinsic than mere ideology—then realism, as the dominant aesthetic growing within the humanist world, must be understood as a particular kind of historically traceable construct with an ambivalent relationship to power. Realism has been the vehicle for some of the most stringent novelistic criticisms of the status quo while at the same time reproducing assumptions about normality and humanity that work to pathologize those who exist outside its orbit. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 438 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Historical materialism requires no metaphysical-materialist foundation; Spiritualism and materialism are two halves of one Cartesian dualism, not opposites — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 293; Appealing to commonsense realism to refute philosophy implicitly restores religious belief. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1567 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Spiritualism and materialism are two halves of one Cartesian dualism, not opposites #qualifies (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 293
• Denying metaphysics in favor of science is itself a metaphysical position #qualifies (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 294
• Appealing to commonsense realism to refute philosophy implicitly restores religious belief. #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1567
• Realism both critiques and reinforces the status quo’s exclusions #expands (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 438
• Positivist philosophy imposes an empirical a priori that cannot be transcended #responds-to (0.70) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 671