Recent writers in the libertarian tradition have suggested a natural affinity between hermeneutics and libertarian politics. This case is not persuasive. We look at two different ways the link has been attempted. In one, markets themselves are seen as constituting a hermeneutic conversation of sorts. A second approach uses hermeneutics to underpin the traditional liberal confinement of the state to setting the rules of the game—to matters of the right as opposed to the good. But the conception of the self (...) that emerges from hermeneutic thought leads to a communitarian rather than a liberal politics. (shrink)

In response to the recent antitheory movement which has called into question the relevance of theory itself, this paper seeks to defend the practice of theory. Taking hermeneutical theory as its model, it seeks to show how a properly postmodern conception of the role and function of theory eludes the criticisms elaborated by various antitheorists. In formulating a new way of envisaging the relation betweeen theory and practice, it seeks not only to defend the theoretical enterprise but to demonstrate as (...) well its importance for the discursive practices of the human sciences and for sociopolitical praxis. (shrink)

“Postmodernism” denotes efforts to replace foundationalist philosophy with contextu‐alist, immanentist forms of reason. “Postlibertarianism” denotes efforts to transcend contemporary minimal statism, questioning both its “libertarian” moral superstructure and its underlying consequentialist claims and seeking to determine whether the latter can be generalized in a way that displaces the former. Efforts to reach minimal‐statist conclusions by postmodern means seem bound to aggravate the problem that plagues contemporary minimal statism: its failure to be true to its consequentialist foundations, reflected in its long‐standing (...) devotion to dubious arguments for the intrinsic good of laissez‐faire capitalism. For postmodernism fosters the illusion that one can do without any foundations at all. Rather than recovering its consequentialist roots, therefore, postmodern minimal statism tends to rely unquestioningly on the normative foundations already accepted by the libertarian “speech community,” neither responding to alternative interpretations of the value of liberty, nor transcending the arid conversation of “liberty” in favor of investigations of the real world of contemporary capitalism and the welfare state. (shrink)

This article examines a peculiarity dating from Classical times, namely, that democracy may be achieved, in practice, independently of and prior to its articulation as theory. This peculiarity has implications for the way in which the history of democratic theory is understood, and also for the place of the democratic theorist in society. Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, Chantal Mouffe and John Keane are theorists of democracy, but they all depart, first, from the commitment to the universal truth‐claims that underpin other (...) schools of democratic thought, and, second, from the concomitant belief in the priority of theory over practice. In doing so, they make it difficult to theorise how democracy might be brought about, except, circularly, where it already exists. On the one side, Feyerabend, Rorty and, to a lesser extent, Keane, assume that ‘democracy’ already exists, so that its realisation requires no theory. On the other, Mouffe argues that ‘democracy’ does not yet exist in practice, but her attempts to theorise its realisation are not convincing. (shrink)