What’s the point of political philosophy?

Beware attempts to make political theory "relevant"

by Alex Worsnip / May 17, 2013 / Leave a comment

In majority-Sikh societies, a law making it compulsory to wear a motorcycle helmet would go against the will of the people. Are principles of justice universal or contextual? © Flickmor

It is a near-truism that philosophy operates at a remove from the “real world.” Many philosophers suppose that the answers to questions in logic, epistemology and metaphysics are independent of particular empirical facts about how human society happens to be set up. But what about ethics and political philosophy? How far should philosophers concerned with these areas take into account the messy reality of everyday life?

Not far at all, says one venerable tradition that dates back at least to Kant in the 18th century, and probably as far as Plato. From this perspective, the job of ethics and political philosophy is to work out how things ought to be. This need not be closely related to how things actually are. For the philosopher trying to imagine the ideal society or specify the nature of virtue, engaging in detail with the world in its current state (or in its historical forms) may be unnecessary or even unhelpful.

This traditional picture, however, has always had its detractors. In recent years the attack has been led by a group identifying themselves as “political realists,” counting amongst their number philosophers such as Raymond Geuss and the late Bernard Williams. According to the realists, the traditional picture risks making political philosophy both irrelevant and falsely universalistic, mistakenly supposing that the same abstract principles are applicable to societies of radically different kinds. Realists have singled out many of the most prominent political philosophers of the 20th century—John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin and GA Cohen—for particular scorn.

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Comments

Alyson
May 17, 2013 at 19:38
'If, like Miller, you think that there need not be such deeper universal principles underlying particular prescriptions, what does make such prescriptions appropriate in one context but not another? For example, Miller suggests that even basic democratic principles are not applicable in some societies. Since formulating political principles is about articulating our convictions, says Miller, democratic principles may be inappropriate in a society where people do not support democracy. And this is not just a hypothetical scenario: recent polling data suggests that democracy does not always find popular support—even in countries such as Libya which have been portrayed as swept up in recent pro-democracy movements.' Rights to basic equality, self-determination and freedom of speech, enshrined in law, are pre-requisites for effective democracy. As soon as a theocracy or one-party system denies some elements of the population any of these three pre-requisites, then rule of law is not open to improvement, to universal human rights or multi-culturalism. It is easy to stifle dissent when the penalties are too high to mount an effective challenge to the ruling cadres.
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Ramesh Raghuvanshi
May 18, 2013 at 07:32
What may philosopher wrote that one his unconscious autobiography.All philosophers are wrote about ideal society which they want to be come in reality. that one is compelled on them from readers.All readers are expected guidance from philosopher how live on earth.From Plato to Sartre .spread illusion in society.If they tell the truth people may stone them.Just consider how many generation of west abused to Machiavelli because he told truth.spoke on reality
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John Black
May 18, 2013 at 11:38
David Miller says that our sense of justice is a human construct. The human eye is not a human construct. Are altruism and concern for others human constructs? We seem to share these impulses with other mammals and without them human society and species survival seem unlikely.
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Greg McColm
May 18, 2013 at 17:16
Actually, "realism" in political philosophy goes back to Thomas Hobbes and Machiavelli, and their are signs of it in Aristotle and Han Fei. Meanwhile, this looks like a debate over situation ethics (what should we do given the situation) than political philosophy (what is really happening?).
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Charles
May 19, 2013 at 03:03
If you think Plato didn't concern himself with the messiness of the reality of politics as his wrote his Republic and Laws, the you haven't read either book ver well. A primary concern in the "rule if philosophers" is whether this is even possible. At the very least consider the diminution of Eros in the Republic and how Plato uses prisoners at the center of his government in the "nocturnal counsel" in The Laws.
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Steve
May 19, 2013 at 05:40
Democracy is not defined here sufficiently for the needs of the whole point. Masses want to rule just as much as elites. Rulers want to vanquish their competitors, definitely not give anywhere near "equal treatment" to others. Where the real bone of contention is; how do you let them live? That's a fact not only in the US, but in more equitable environs (like Scandinavia) too. The popular power of religion in over 2/3d of the global population, clearly proves the widespread desire to be above "oth-ers". Racial, ethnic, regional inferiority theories form alliances. Funny that motorcycle helmet laws are at the top of the message. They were hugely unpopular among riders in the US, (including myself, though I always wore mine when going faster than app. 30 mph (48 kmph) but big money rammed it through legislation. Curiously, that may tell me why I live in a first world democracy: the majority is somewhat balanced by big money. Having come from the killing fields of Europe, I've seen enough to believe majority rule needs counter-weight if the minority is to survive. Unchecked majority rule (democracy?) crashes, and it's not pretty. Look at the third Reich, USSR, Napoleon, etc. They didn't have the majority you say? Hmm. I've seen two of them close up; when things went well: most, nearly all, were for it. Just like the US voter in my 56 years here, one war after another. Domestic, (drugs, crime, poverty (there's a good one), and many more, and foreign. Granada; Yeaa. Vietnam; Boo. So let's not even begin to talk about Democracy, Freedom, and other buzzwords. FDR (Eleanor?) defined four freedoms. Today, Obama rides roughshod over the first; freedom of speech. (Manning? Wiki?) Heads of state, any state, give marching orders to armies of lackeys persecuting dissidents. It's a fact. Democracy, =majority votes, = command of the state armies (too numerous to mention) to the powerful; the moneyed, the popular, the vote getter. What is Democracy?
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James
May 19, 2013 at 10:24
A fantastic read. Bravo.
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Sand
May 19, 2013 at 10:44
Instead of assuming absolutes of the rights to conform or not conform to various traditions, religious or otherwise, it might be worthwhile to consider the possible results of enforcement of particular behavior. Society can accept various illogical traditions if they cause no harm. If Sikhs wear no helmets while motorcycling, do they have a sizable injury and death rate over those who do wear helmets and is this acceptable among Sikhs? And if the rates are higher, then, justifiably Sikhs should have a higher insurance rate for a motorcycle license to cover the cost of disability and thereby relieve society in general of the extra costs and in cases of accidents there should be some acceptable prejudice against Sikhs in reparations for head injuries because of the lack of helmets. Various dangerous sports are tolerated in society as long as health and medical costs for these indulgences are not put on the rest of society.
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lloyd667
May 19, 2013 at 13:07
Well, I stumbled pretty early on, at the example of violation of religious principles. Why would motorcycle helmets be illigitmate if the violate religious principles, but legitimate if not? On what philisophical principle, in other words, would we, as a "fundamental" matter, place religious belief above, say, a personal taste for riding without a helmet? Fundamentally, the proposition is nothing more than begging the question. And this is not an isolated example. Exactly thevsame comment applies, mutatis mutandis, to the examples of charity and racial discrimination. In all cases, what is to be proved is simply assumed. Maybe the author is just talking down to us plebs, rather than providing arguments that are legitimate but "too difficult". If so, the article is a waste of paper. Or, maybe the author is accurately characterizing the state of political philosophy. if so, the article is quite the eye opener, and I would conclude that political philosophy departments should be shut down.
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Saksin
May 19, 2013 at 20:22
I find it revealing that so much of this thoughtful article deals with the influence of political philosophy and ethics, with "its aspirations to reform both our sense of what justice is and our concrete political system," as the author puts it. If these philosophers cared more for understanding and explaining moral convictions, precepts, and systems, rather than for reforming, promulgating or advocating them (ultimately recommending policy) they might end up contributing to moral clarity rather than to academic controversy. They might then also find that though there obviously cannot be a theory of justice "independent of us", there very likely can be one specific to us. That is, it would be specific to us in our capacity of human beings as opposed to pigs or asses, as already Heraclitus recognized when he penned his immortal lines "Pigs delight in mire rather than in clean water", and "Asses would choose chaff rather than gold" The standard of comparison in both cases is of course human beings: We are the ones who would choose clean water and gold, and the differences ultimately come down to the different biological natures of the species in question. That the contrasting natures of biological species, which extend into their psychologies through the differing needs and consequent motivational structures, preferences and choices that derive from those contrasts, that such things should have nothing to do with the subject matter of political philosophy and ethics, seem implausible on the face of it. To explore what that relevance might in fact be, one would have to know what convictions human beings actually hold in these areas, along the lines of the cross-cultural studies of the psychological bases of morality pursued by Jonathan Haidt and others. The most general patterns in these matters can then be pursued as provisional candidates for moral derivatives of our species-specific human nature.
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Barry Cooper
May 19, 2013 at 23:50
A lot of gobbledy-gook disappears when you do two things: 1) assume progress is possible; and 2) define in what it would consist. The foundational problem philosophers--so-called--have, that plumbers do not, is that they don't know what they are trying to do, and don't know when they get there. Obviously, they spill a lot of words, but at what point does ANYONE insist that there be a real world consequence of their having lived and worked? Our civilization is imploding under the weight of bad ideas, ideas which are created and promulgated by people for whom being RELEVANT, much less useful, is of only marginal interest. In my view, I have solved these problems. I have an essay on my website, which should be linked, which deals with the nature of what I choose for simplicities' sake to call Goodness. I would ask, as well, a general question: if you are neither building Goodness, nor even trying to define it in a useful way, in what respect are you not a waste of space and talent?
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Klaus
May 20, 2013 at 21:27
On reading this, I'm struck by the fact that Miller seems to be taking the same sort of adolescent relativist line that I refute every year in my Introduction to Philosophy classes. Facile, and not worthy of debate with Gerry Cohen!
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IVAN TIRCUIT SR.
May 20, 2013 at 23:21
Very balanced insights. Excellent Read.
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Ted Schrey Montreal
May 21, 2013 at 19:07
Right from the start of reading this piece I 'm tripping myself up by distinguishing between 'political philosophy', the philosophy of politics' and something I can only call 'the politics of philosophy'--without having the vaguest idea what these concepts mean. The best I can do so far is to hook into the comment that '...justice is a human invention', an idea that seems to me so obvious that I have a hard time taking alternative suggestions seriously. Of course I also assume religions are a human invention. But let me continue to read, so I may or may not learn something.
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Ted Schrey Montreal
May 21, 2013 at 19:38
Before immersing myself in further reading, what never fails to stick in my craw, or in a place very close to it, is the idea that people are/want to be 'tolerant' and 'sensitive' to diverging norms or customs by creating or allowing conditions in which other, presumably equally tolerant and sensitive folk can persist in being apparently less than fully tolerant and sensitive in turn. What's that all about?
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Mark
May 22, 2013 at 01:23
The philosopher with the biggest claim to realism was Karl Marx. But he was also the philosopher who broke with deductive logic. Moving beyond philosophy as a description of how we currently think was a conscious project for Marx but it came with the cost of allowing a subjective rather than objective test of 'truth'. The above is an interesting piece but really, the real challenge for political philosophy is how to take its 'oughts' seriously when it can't properly establish the essence of the thing itself.
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Ted Schrey Montreal
May 22, 2013 at 23:16
Whoww, this is a good read, say I, entirely unversed in pol phil. Truth, like all abstractions (love, justice, progress etc), has the sharp, solid outlines of a mirage, which provides a reassuring boost to our convictions and beliefs (incl. religious faith). When we get coser to reality or context, though, it begins to look different.
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Ted Schrey Montreal
May 22, 2013 at 23:31
'coser' in my previous pensee is better written and pronounced as 'closer'. By way of variant: abstractions are absolutes, it seems to me, and as such a source of constant conflict in human affairs.
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Alyson
May 23, 2013 at 15:39
'Miller’s book raises one final, more pessimistic, question. Does the exact methodology of political philosophy really affect its chance of influencing political practice? It is true that a more “realistic” set of demands will be more relevant in the sense that they could be implemented if anyone were listening, but the reality is that, with the possible exception of a few very high-profile figures such as Rawls, most political philosophers do not influence public policy to a great degree' Is political philosophy description or prescription? Is it comparative or does it seek a deeper underpinning to offer to political systems? Montesquieu, in his 'Esprit de Lois' 1748, proposed the political institutions of England as a model to the government of the continent. He was clear that its effectiveness lay in its mixed, or moderate, constitution, which combined the distinctive principles of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, while also ensuring that a clear separation existed between the legislature, the executive and the judicature. [Halevy, 1924, A History of the English People]
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Ted Schrey Montreal
May 23, 2013 at 16:58
"...there's only reason to be tolerant if tolerance has a value that is not itself relative" is an assertion I am still grappling with. What could it mean, beyond being cutely semantic? One is tolerant to avoid or escape confrontation; or being tolerant expresses an appreciation of the rights and desires of others. The 'not itself relative' part of tolerance escapes me, except perhaps as a sign that when one comes to the end of tolerance there will be an absolute change in attitude. But then one no longer talks about tolerance.
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Ted Schrey Montreal
May 24, 2013 at 03:55
One last point. The reviewer opines that "...the notion of our beliefs about justice being distorted by bias does not...make sense if there is no justice independent of our beliefs, as Milder's claim...justice is a human invention implies", explaining further that "Things can only be distorted if there is a truth to distort". I find this reasoning impenetrable. The opinions on what I take to be justice by the U.S.Supreme Court, e.g., can in many cases be perused as to whether a conservative or a liberal judge is pronouncing. The 'literalists', so-called, pretend to understand what the writers of the Constitution intended. They were Earthlings, it is generally assumed. The Judges are Earthlings too, although sometimes you wonder.
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Gordon Simmons
May 24, 2013 at 18:43
Guess I'm with Nietzsche & Sartre: Yeah, humans create (make up) values. Why is knowing that ever a reason not to keep on doing it?
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Rational Hoplite
May 28, 2013 at 02:33
Perhaps one baby-step in the right direction (for a contextualist) is: While we're abandoning the pursuit of a (non-contextual? transcendental?) theory of justice, let us each worry more about the political/legislative/judicial condition of our own nation (state, county, city, town), and less about the polities or domains of others. Not my polity, no my problem -- that's my motto. (When their polity is a security threat to my polity, however...) And there's the rub. Red-in-tooth-and-claw political realism (or contextualism), however, doesn't seem to have a fighting chance. The popular and persuasive rhetoric of human rights, the mission-creep of the WHO, and the thriving aid/humanitarian relief industry all rest upon (or: take for granted) a number or normative universals. Many Westerners like - or seem to like - some of these wannabe universal moral truisms, even if (apropos of domestic matters) they self-describe as realists/contextualists. But so long as Westerns/Western nations believe in the duty to now and then wag fingers at the norms, folkways, policies, and prejudices of other peoples, contextualism will itself always be pointing to an ideal.
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Anjum Altaf
July 12, 2013 at 12:44
Alex: I am not a philosopher. That may be the reason it seemed obvious to me that a theory of justice that did not factor in the reality of power would be of little use for activists. I came to this conclusion after reading Sen's The Idea of Justice. My concern was expressed in the following: http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/justice-power-and-truth/ Of course, not being a philosopher, I may be completely off the wall here.
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