ABSTRACT Foregrounding Hegel’s political cosmology allows us to set his dialectic-speculative theory of the political world in contrast both to ideal theories and to historicist-positivist theories. Against these positions, Hegel upholds his “realism of the idea”: the claim that a rational world is neither a pre-given whole nor an unattainable ideal, but the dynamic, immanent orientation of reason that continually constructs and animates the world. Hegel’s view of the world thus provides him with a way of reconceiving the relationship between (...) philosophy and actuality. In this view, philosophy is not immune from, or external to, the world it theorizes, but is produced and checked by that world, which it, in turn, produces. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a critique of a rigidly moralistic temperament in public discourse from the perspective of political realism. It unpacks three types of moralism in public discourse, and for each, it explains why it is normatively problematic from a realist perspective: ‘Moralist Causalism’ is the belief that moral preaching is an apt way to affect the world for the better; ‘Moralist Manicheism’ is a dichotomous division of the world between good and evil; ‘Moralist Absolutism’ is the conviction (...) that only morality matters when we answer the question, ‘What should we do?’. The paper then turns these negative criticisms into a positive recipe for how to look realistically at what is valuable in the world. First, there are not only multiple values in the world but also different sources of values (epistemic, instrumental, aesthetic…) which may conflict with one another. We call this requirement ‘Meta-Normative Pluralism’. Second, politics is pivotal because it is the sphere where the clashes among all other spheres of value are authoritatively resolved—a role which moralists usurp for morality. (shrink)