In this article, I address the editors’ (Sidnell and Lambek) arguments about the immanence of the ethical, in contrast to different questions concerning ‘ordinary ethics’ recently raised in anthropology. I will do so by asking what an ‘ordinary realism’ might entail for anthropology, and the way it could possibly help us to appreciate the difficulties inherent in our work of approaching the issues at stake in the reality we face, whether during fieldwork or back home. I will proceed and develop this questioning with the help of some contemporary philosophers who have sustained and enriched the debates on ethics in anthropology. I will illustrate the difficulty of ordinary realism for anthropology with an example taken from a particular moment during my field in Zanzibar where dreams and witchcraft entered the scene.
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