Following in the footsteps of Bernard Williams, I aim to delineate and advance a more realistic, less moralistic approach to thinking about morals and politics in a liberal culture. To do so, I push back against one framing of what Williams meant in urging greater realism, and in criticizing what he saw as political theory's excessive moralism, which has recently gained traction. According to a number of recent authors, the important issue Williams raised should be understood in terms of whether (...) there are two “kinds” or “sources” of “normativity” found in liberal politics and morality, respectively: Realists are said to accuse their Moralist opponents of countenancing only one normativity, which is moral, when in fact there are two, one of which is “distinctively political.” I show how this now popular framing leads to a number of distortions, particularly insofar as our aim is to understand Williams' moral and political thought. I go on to argue that, once these are sorted out, the term ‘normativity’ itself contributes to the problem—current usages of the term are inextricably bound up with a recognizably moralistic style of thought, of the sort that Williams encouraged us to oppose. (shrink)

This review argues that Edward Hall’s outstanding new book on the political thought of three outstanding 20th-century thinkers – Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Bernard Williams – has three major substantial contributions to contemporary realism: it offers convincing realist interpretations of their oeuvres, extracts inspiring new ideas from their works for future theorizing and provides powerful arguments in defence of a liberal realist position. However, given Hall’s expertise in Williams’ thought, it might be surprising that the chapters about Hampshire seem (...) the most interesting and most convincing parts of the book because they address some of the most fundamental issues of realism in an especially concise and well-written form. (shrink)

A prevailing understanding of realism, chiefly among its critics, casts realists as those who seek a ‘distinctively political normativity’, where this is interpreted as meaning nonmoral in kind. Moralists, on this account, are those who reject this and believe that political normativity remains moral. Critics have then focused much of their attention on demonstrating that the search for a nonmoral political normativity is doomed to fail which, if right, would then seem to fatally undermine the realist endeavour. This paper makes (...) the case that casting the difference between realism and moralism in these terms is a mistake, one which overlooks the substantial body of realist work which is clear that it has no such aspirations to develop a nonmoral political normativity. The hope is that in drawing attention to this mistake a line can be drawn under these unhelpful debates, and we can move on to more fruitful constructive and critical discussions between realists and their critics. (shrink)

In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but (...) groups cannot spontaneously secure collective decisions and are prone to conflicts. Particularly, the fact that potentially violent conflicts emerge unilaterally means that order requires coercion. I conclude that mischaracterizing conflict and order leads to undesirable normative principles, and that this criticism can be leveraged not only against Rawlsian liberals who moralize conflicts away, but also against some agonists who underestimate the need for order and some communitarians who underplay both circumstances. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for a revision of contemporary forms of political realism in political theory. I argue that contemporary realists have gone awry in increasingly centring their approach around a metaethical claim: that political theory should be rooted in a political form of normativity that is distinct from moral normativity. Several critics of realism have argued that this claim is unconvincing. But I suggest that it is also a counterintuitive starting point for realism, and one unnecessary to avoid (...) the ‘applied morality’ approach to political theory that realists oppose. Instead, realism should be methodologically orientated around what I term ‘empirically constitutive political realities’ - enduring features of real political contexts that are systematically consequential in their normative implications. Realists can persuasively argue that such empirically constitutive political realities must be attended to in political theory-building, and not merely treated as a context in which independently formulated moral theories are simply applied. This framing of realism accords real politics a genuinely foundational theoretical role, but without requiring any contentious metaethical stance about a non-moral political normativity. I explain some methodological implications that follow for realism – in particular the need to prioritise empirically grounded theorisation of real political contexts over abstract and rather essentialist claims about ‘the political’. I also argue that such a framing of realism helps engender a more accurate, less divisive, and more pluralist conception of methodological debates within political theory. (shrink)

The world is undeniably full of injustice. Many feel that much political philosophy is practically impotent and engaged instead in overly abstract theorising insufficiently sensitive to the realities of the world. One response to this concern is David Miller’s influential model of evidence-based political philosophy, which claims to be sensitive to empirical evidence from the social sciences, takes seriously people’s opinions, and defends the role of facts in grounding normative principles. Using various examples from the field of global justice, one (...) of Miller’s key areas of work, I show that Miller’s method is unconvincing on two levels. His theoretical argument for fact-dependence is flawed, and his practical argument for an opinion-sensitive political theory is either guilty of status quo bias or, in an attempt to escape it, becomes self-defeating. While the paper is primarily critical, I endeavour also to draw out the implications of my critiques for the role of the ‘real world’ in theorising. (shrink)

Realists criticise the moralised approaches that inform ideal political theory for being unable to handle the brute facts of disagreement that constitute political reality. As a result, such approaches are insufficiently political, too ambitious in terms of the substantive unanimity that can be expected to emerge from political differences, and naive in the proposals they make. In this paper, I use Brian Barry’s ‘moralised‘ approach – as developed in ’Justice as Impartiality’ – to argue that ideal theory can be reformulated (...) to make it capable not only of responding to realist criticisms, but of offering a moralised approach to politics that has significant realist pedigree. As an instance of this pedigree, I argue thus understood, ideal theory can provide us the tools to distinguish between the making of compromises and the acceptance of capitulation and thereby contribute to an understanding of our political worlds. (shrink)

In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but (...) groups cannot spontaneously secure collective decisions and are prone to conflicts. Particularly, the fact that potentially violent conflicts emerge unilaterally means that order requires coercion. I conclude that mischaracterizing conflict and order leads to undesirable normative principles, and that this criticism can be leveraged not only against Rawlsian liberals who moralize conflicts away, but also against some agonists who underestimate the need for order and some communitarians who underplay both circumstances. (shrink)

This review argues that Edward Hall’s outstanding new book on the political thought of three outstanding 20th-century thinkers – Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Bernard Williams – has three major substantial contributions to contemporary realism: it offers convincing realist interpretations of their oeuvres, extracts inspiring new ideas from their works for future theorizing and provides powerful arguments in defence of a liberal realist position. However, given Hall’s expertise in Williams’ thought, it might be surprising that the chapters about Hampshire seem (...) the most interesting and most convincing parts of the book because they address some of the most fundamental issues of realism in an especially concise and well-written form. (shrink)

The ambition of this article is threefold. First, it is to offer a realist reading of Aristotle’s regime theory as it is laid out mostly in Books IV–VI of his Politics. The author argues that Arist...