On the "Essential Contestedness" of Political Concepts

Abstract

One of the more intractable problems of political theory is the highly contested nature of central concepts -such as justice, democracy, rights, freedom, power. The apparent lack of a principle for resolving these contests has led many to espouse the view that the concepts in question are not only contested, but also essentially so, in a sense (or senses) to be elucidated. In Section I, I identify two views which I shall label the contentedness views. I believe that the formulations proposed give a fair characterization of what theorists have understood by the claim that certain concepts in political theory are essentially contested. In Section II, I consider the objection that the essential contestedness views are incoherent, or at least contain inner tensions. I shall claim that these criticisms can be met provided that there is a significant reformulation of the essential contestedness views. In the remainder of the paper (Secs. III, IV, and V) I discuss the justification of the essential contestedness views in their reformulated form. Three theses used to defend the view that certain political concepts are essentially contested are identified. I argue that none of these theses performs this justificatory role.