Normative Political Philosophy Research Articles

How Concrete Is Confucian Liberalism?

Abstract This commentary evaluates whether Roy Tseng’s Confucian Liberalism provides an attractive normative political philosophy for modern East Asia, compared with existing Confucian political theories. I argue that Tseng’s Confucian-Hegelian theory operates at a highly abstract level, without outlining institutional structures and policy orientations that embody his philosophical ideals. In contrast, leading Confucian political theorists in the past two decades, be they progressive, liberal, or traditionalist, have offered multiple “Confucian-inspired regimes” for modern societies. It is therefore doubtful whether Tseng has advanced a new alternative to existing proposals, and whether the theory of Confucian liberalism is truly sensitive to the “here and now.”

Consequentialism and the Role of Practices in Political Philosophy

Political philosophers have recently debated what role social practices should play in normative theorising. Should our theories be practice-independent or practice-dependent? That is, can we formulate normative institutional principles independently of real-world practices or are such principles only ever relative to the practices they are meant to govern? Any first-order theory in political philosophy must contend with the methodological challenges coming out of this debate. In this article, I argue that consequentialism has a plausible account of how social practices should factor in normative political philosophy. I outline a version of consequentialism, Practice Consequentialism, that provides a plausible blueprint for integrating social practices in normative theorising. Second, I argue that Practice Consequentialism accounts well for the central arguments on both sides of the practice-dependence debate. Capturing arguments for practice-dependence, consequentialism brings out why real-world practices are central in formulating institutional principles. Conversely, capturing arguments for practice-independence, consequentialism offers a clear external normative perspective from which to evaluate practices.

The varieties of idealization and the politics of economic growth: a case study on modality and the methodology of normative political philosophy

ABSTRACT Are societies required to pursue continual economic growth as a matter of justice? In “The Value of Economic Growth”, Julie Rose considers three arguments in favor of the need for continual economic growth, each of which revolves around the instrumental value of economic growth for promoting an important good that is needed for a just society. In each case, Rose argues that there are mechanisms other than economic growth that could allow a society to deliver the relevant goods, and thus meet the demands of justice with respect to those goods. I raise a set of issues for Rose’s argument that put pressure on the normative significance of her discussion. At the heart of these issues are ones about which possibilities Rose considers and which idealizations she makes. These issues tie into more general questions about the aims and methodology of normative work in social/political philosophy. Thus, in addition to being a contribution to the debate over the politics of economic growth, this paper can be understood partly as a case study in how reflection on these kinds of issues – ones about modality, idealization, and methodology – can matter to how we evaluate specific arguments in social/political philosophy.

«Сентябрьская группа»: от аналитического марксизма к нормативной политической философии

Analytical Marxism – formerly also known as the “September group” – is a branch of Anglo-Saxon social theory, political and normative philosophy. There are several publications on the set in the Russian humanities and social sciences, but all articles are limited to the sociological aspect of the work of analytical Marxists. In this article we propose to consider another aspect of this direction – normative aspect. To show this aspect of analytical Marxists, the author suggests considering the movement in historical dynamics. It originates from the publication of “Karl Marx’s Theory of History” (1978) by Canadian-English philosopher J.A. Cohen. Cohen tried to rid Marxism of Hegelianism and make it the subject of a real science, which set the framework the current’s activity. At the first stage of the work, analytical Marxists (J.A. Cohen, Jon Elster, John Roemer, Erik Olin Wright, Robert Brenner, Adam Przeworski and others) worked within the framework of sociology and historical sociology, combining the problems raised by Marx with various scientific methods – game theory, rational choice theory, historical sociology, etc. By the early 1990’s, some of the participants of the movement left the group (Elster, Przeworski), while others refocused on new topics, namely, normative political philosophy. Arguing with the ideas and arguments of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and others, analytical Marxists answered the problems of normative theory in their own way – an attempt to combine freedom and equality (Cohen), egalitarianism (Roemer), real utopias (Wright), and basic income (Philippe Van Parijs).

Cosmos and nomos: cosmopolitanism in art and political philosophy

ABSTRACT In this article I address the tensions between normative political philosophy and aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida have been two of the most influential philosophers to engage with the political and ethical questions of cosmopolitanism. Habermas has drawn on the foundations established by Immanuel Kant and set out to define an institutional framework that could secure the rights of people in an age of mobility. Derrida’s emphasis is more heavily slanted to ethical relations rather than geo-political structures. He reversed Kant’s starting point, by placing the exposure to the other and the necessity of hospitality as the basis of freedom and truth. While both Habermas and Derrida have developed their political philosophy by working in close touch with Kant, the transcendental aspects of his thinking is now totally absent in the contemporary debates. As a general rule political philosophy has averted its gaze from the cosmos, and more generally it has to be noted that it has bracketed the founding philosophical concepts of aesthetics and physis. The focus is mostly on the terrain of anthropos, polis and the nomos. In short, the discussion begins and ends within the normative parameters of cosmopolitanism. By contrast, artists from the pioneering modernists like Malevich to contemporary figures such as Saraceno have never abandoned the quest for cosmogony. The ethical orientation of aesthetic cosmopolitanism appears to co-exist with a wider claim of belonging to the cosmos. In this article I contrast the orientation and scope of thinking between normative and aesthetic cosmopolitanism in order to reframe the spheres of connections in contemporary thought.

Judges 19-21: The Disasters of the Community of Virtue

This paper is an ethical exegesis of the biblical story of Gibeah, which concludes the Book of Judges (19–21), to show the catastrophic failure of the anti-political politics of the “community of virtue”, i.e., the rejection of power for the sake of moral society, such as proposed by libertarians, neo-liberals, anarchists and utopians. I consider Kant’s statement of the political problem: given humanity’s unsocial sociality, where each person is tempted to act as an exception to universal law, humans need rulers, but how to obtain rulers who are not themselves ruled by power, and become tyrannical, rather than being ruled by justice? The solution proposed by “the community of virtue” would reject power altogether and replace it with society regulated exclusively according to the moral virtue of its members. The Bible’s story of Gibeah shows graphically and conclusively the failure of any such attempt. Instead, as with normative political philosophy, the Bible endorses the rule of a king, i.e., the rule of the state, and a politics whereby power is disciplined to serve justice because it is rooted in Torah, i.e., a fundamental covenant, charter or constitution, aware and vigilant regarding the ambiguities and temptations of sovereignty, and therefore, ideally, always open to critique. As exemplified by biblical prophets, political protest against injustices perpetrated by the powerful against the least—widow, orphan, stranger—is at once religious obligation and true patriotism.

Forms of Injustice and Regression

Abstract Over the last years, the debate over global justice has moved beyond the divide between statist and cosmopolitan, as well as ideal and non-ideal approaches. Rather, a turn to empirical realities has taken place, claiming that normative political philosophy and theory need to address empirical facts about global poverty and wealth. The talk argues that some aspects of the earlier “Critical Theory” and its notions of negativity, praxis, and communicative power allow for a non-empiristic link between normative theory and a well-informed social science analysis that is based on experienced injustice. The analysis of border politics and housing politics will serve as an example for a critical theory of global injustice that addresses regressive as well as emancipative developments in society.

Moralism in theories of secession: a realist perspective

AbstractMoral reasoning is the most common approach to secession in political philosophy. Just‐cause, choice and liberal‐cultural theories rely on moral conceptions of political authority. This article examines an alternative view through an exploration of moral theories of secession from a realist perspective. Realism has recently seen a revival as a form of normative political philosophy and focuses on political disagreement and legitimacy rather than rights and moral analysis. I claim that realism would reject utopianism and moralism present in theories of secession. Instead of regarding secession as a right, realism would frame secession as a political option. According to this view, this article explores a realist theory of secession that would be based on the priority of politics and disagreement among other concepts. This would be a middle‐ground theory, compatible with liberal values and existing moral theories.

Equality, value pluralism and relevance: Is luck egalitarianism in one way good, but not all things considered?

Some luck egalitarians argue that justice is just one value among others and is thus not necessarily what we should strive for in order to make the world better. Yet, by focusing on only one dimension of what matters – luck equality – it proves very difficult to draw political implications in cases where several values are in tension. We believe that normative political philosophy must have the ambitionto guide political action. Hence, in this paper we make a negative and a positive point. Negatively, we argue that the inability to offer recommendations on what to strive for potentially weakens Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen’s account of luck egalitarianism. In order not to be irrelevant for political practice, a more serviceable version of luck egalitarianism that would allow for all-things-considered judgments is needed. Positively, we examine two possible routes toward such a view. One would be to stick to pluralism, but to discuss possible clashes and find a rule of regulation in each case. Another would consist in giving up value pluralism by identifying an over-arching value or principle that would arbitrate between different values. We suggest that Lippert-Rasmussen’s foundation of equality carries the potential for such an overarching principle.

Political realism as ideology critique

This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. We defend the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory’s groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem, we combine insights from theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams and other realists, Critical Theory, and analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology and social construction. The upshot is an account of realism as empirically informed critique of social and political phenomena. We reject a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so provide an alternative to the anti-empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise.

Building a symbiosis of praxis and theory in normative political philosophy

Building a symbiosis of praxis and theory in normative political philosophy

Climate ethics and the failures of ‘normative political philosophy’

In this article the claim of normative ethics to be the main philosophical access to the problems raised by climate change is contested and instead it is suggested that these problems be addressed from a different perspective: that of a political philosophy that escapes its own reduction to a theory of justice. Part I shows several incidences of how mainstream climate ethics fails with regard to its intention to shape an effective climate policy. Part II argues that ‘politics for the future’ as required by man-made lethal challenges has to complement the adversarial politics-as-usual. Included here is a redefinition of what the relationship of politics and morality means in the new circumstances – not only with regard to climate change.

Mark bevirʼs a theory of governance from the vantage of political philosophy

This paper offers a critical commentary on Mark Bevirʼs recent book A Theory of Governance from the perspective of normative political philosophy. It explores three ways in which Bevirʼs analysis can be brought into dialogue with political philosophy. First, it considers the role of generalizations in successful explanations of social phenomena. Second, it explores how a decentred theory of governance can help identify solutions to important social problems. Third, it explores the relation between Bevirʼs account of governance and theories of deliberative democracy.

An Ubuntu-based Evaluation of the South African State's Responses to Marikana: Where's the Reconciliation?

In this work of normative political philosophy, I consider the ethical status of the South African government's responses to the Marikana massacre, where police shot and killed more than 30 striking miners, in light of a moral principle grounded on values associated with ubuntu. I argue that there are several respects in which the government's reactions have been unethical from an ubuntu-oriented perspective, and also make positive suggestions about what it instead should have been doing. Much of what I recommend amounts to contending that the government should have taken resolute steps towards seeking reconciliation of a specific sort that I show follows from ubuntu interpreted as an ethical theory.

Propaganda, ideology, and democracy: A review of Jason Stanley, How Propaganda Works

Propaganda, ideology, and democracy: A review of Jason Stanley, <i>How Propaganda Works</i>

Justice and Constructivism

Albert Weale's Democratic Justice and the Social Contract is an important book. It offers an innovative and original (proceduralist) account of justice. In so doing, it places what Brian Barry called ‘the empirical method’ at the centre of normative political philosophy's attempts to generate determinate answers to moral questions. This article-written from the perspective of someone sympathetic to both the commitment to mutual advantage and the empirical method – focuses on the kind of argument it is that Weale is offering and in particular on the nature of his constructivist project. It argues that Weale's commitment to equality lies outside the constructivist project and that this undermines his aspiration to genuine constructivism. The article goes on to consider, on the basis of arguments found in Democratic Justice and the Social Contract, various ways in which Weale might have grounded his egalitarian commitments from within the constructivist project.

Van Parijsian linguistic justice – context, analysis and critiques

This introduction does three things. We first give an overview of the linguistic justice debate in normative political philosophy. We then situate Philippe Van Parijs’s position within it, by zooming in on Van Parijs’s two major normative claims: the support of the rise of English as the global lingua franca and the defence of linguistic territoriality. Finally, we clarify how each of the essays that follow this introduction relates to those two claims.

Political philosophy and the attraction of realism

The progressive abstraction and professionalisation of political philosophy over the last few decades has invited a ‘realist’ backlash. This turn to realism has been promoted and defended by various philosophers for a variety of reasons. This article distinguishes the components of the realist challenge to contemporary normative political theory by contrasting the typology of realist theories developed by Michael Doyle with another set out by Raymond Geuss. The resulting categorisation of ‘realisms’ allows for an indirect critique of a univocal realist challenge to normative political philosophy because many of the claims upon which these ‘realisms’ rely are as abstract and theory-laden as the position they challenge.

Angela Kallhoff, Why Democracy Needs Public Goods

Angela Kallhoff is professor of ethics at the University of Vienna. Drawing from recent political philosophy, she makes the case that “public goods are useful in supporting democracy” (1). The arguments in favor of her thesis, constructed from both Constitutional, and Deliberative Democracy strands of thought are clearly presented in eight relatively short chapters, totaling 146 pages. After introducing the reasons for framing the discussion in normative political philosophy, Kallhoff reviews...

Human Rights as Social Construction by Benjamin Gregg (review)

Reviewed by: Human Rights as Social Construction by Benjamin Gregg René Wolfsteller (bio) Benjamin Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction (Cambridge University Press, 2013), ISBN 9781-1076-1294-5, 272 pages. The evolution of the political theory of human rights for the past twenty years is perhaps best described—by altering a phrase of Charles Taylor1—as a “metaphysical limbo” of legitimation. In the course of this “limbo” scholars from various disciplines have been engaging in a competition to provide a better, more persuasive foundation for the universal legitimacy of human rights, but simultaneously with allegedly less demanding [End Page 492] assumptions. Yet, rather than revealing a universal basis of legitimacy to make human rights more accessible and attractive, many scholarly suggestions have contributed to the construction of new boundaries. Those boundaries have typically been the result of a dubious recycling of rational inequality, whereby some people are considered capable of making use of their reason in a superior way to others,2 and hence are able to lead morally virtuous lives according to human rights norms. For example, such boundaries and limitations of equality were fuelled by arguments that human rights require a theological fundament, like the belief in God and human sacredness.3 In a more interventionist sense, the liberal philosopher John Rawls argued that societies abiding human rights as “part of a reasonable law of peoples” have the duty to subject so-called “outlaw regimes” to the rule of “reasonable and just law” in order to overcome the state of nature.4 In his contribution to the debate, the postmodernist Jean-François Lyotard insisted on the fact that the “right to speak” as “the most fundamental human right” has to be merited by undergoing a certain process of “civilization” to free oneself from “his animal nature.”5 However, the nadir of this competition has been the claim of the communitarian Amitai Etzioni, whereby people “under the influence of … alcohol, drugs, or merely a high dose of mass culture, or those who are mentally handicapped, are blind to even the most shining normative light,” and thus, are the main obstacle to the realization of human rights within liberal democratic societies.6 With his study Human Rights as Social Construction, the political theorist Benjamin Gregg intercedes in the dispute with a conception of human rights that tries to tear down those boundaries, to make human rights more accessible, and to mediate between the numerous diverging approaches in the field. Gregg’s aim is to ground the normative debate over human rights in a “realistic” and “pragmatic” way, and he does so mainly by drawing on sociological and anthropological insights. In fact, his book can be considered the first analysis within the field of political theory of human rights that pays attention to sociological as well as anthropological explanations to such a serious extent. Backed up by this trans-disciplinary lens, Gregg puts a persistent emphasis on the fact that particular local communities of people always socially construct moral norms. Sociologists may find this assertion to be a rather mundane insight. Within normative political philosophy, however, it allows Gregg to emphasize the “political” nature of human rights as a contingent “this-worldly” idea which is up for negotiation, but not necessarily ineffective or dispensable. Once we have come to accept the fact that human beings are the sole authors of social norms on earth, it follows that it is both possible and necessary to create effective behavioral norms for themselves. From that assumption Gregg deduces that [End Page 493] human rights are valid only if people consciously and self-reflexively come to hold human rights norms on an individual level. Moreover, if these norms become entrenched in the social institutions of a community, such as the legal order and public education, they will in turn reinforce the development of individual “human rights personalities.”7 Therefore, he argues that people have to be socialized into a solidarity based on the mutual expectation of granting each other these locally defined human rights. And yet, it would not require a collective identity or the idea of a human nature to bring about a shared human rights consciousness, because in a highly...