Prerealist

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Prior to or characteristic of the views preceding realism (in various senses). not-comparable

    "Duncan Kennedy, in his essay "The Stakes of Law, or Hale and Foucault!" criticizes Foucault for not taking law seriously enough. He argues that Foucault has an antiquated, prerealist view of juridical power, "a typically European but utterly misconceived picture of the legal system as a domain governed by rules (as opposed to standards), by individualist (as opposed to altruist) definitions of legal rights, and by deductive (as opposed to 'policy-oriented') reasoning"."

Example

More examples

"Duncan Kennedy, in his essay "The Stakes of Law, or Hale and Foucault!" criticizes Foucault for not taking law seriously enough. He argues that Foucault has an antiquated, prerealist view of juridical power, "a typically European but utterly misconceived picture of the legal system as a domain governed by rules (as opposed to standards), by individualist (as opposed to altruist) definitions of legal rights, and by deductive (as opposed to 'policy-oriented') reasoning"."

Etymology

From pre- + realist.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.