Addressing the controversial history of an aesthetic - Realism - whose central purpose is the negotiation of social, political, and material realities, this book examines the ways in which it engages capital, social decorum and manners, the law and its intrinsic politicisation, the emergence of modern science as a determining factor concerning truth, and the corruptions of the aesthetic under the force of the politics of identity in the contemporary sphere. It draws on an extremely broad range of texts, including literary works from French, English, Italian and Russian writers from the mid-19th century to the present day, including work by Flaubert, Baudelaire, Zola, Henry James, Dickens, and Orwell. In addition to literary texts, this book's points of reference also encompass paintings and films, finally proposing a new philosophical conception of the politics of Realism in an age when politics is increasingly driven by imaginary fantasists.