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  1. The Problem of Political Normativity Understood as Functional Normativity.Eva Erman & Niklas Möller - 2023 - Journal of Philosophical Research.
    In recent years, some political realists have argued that there is a “distinctively political normativity” which should be used when construing and justifying political theories. Among realists focusing on a distinctively political normativity, one can identify two approaches. On the “moral view,” it is explicitly acknowledged that moral norms have a role to play in political normativity. On the “non-moral view,” distinctively political normativity is understood in terms of a non-moral kind of practical normativity. The non-moral view has received severe (...)
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  • Global Political Legitimacy and the Structural Power of Capital.Ugur Aytac - 2023 - Journal of Social Philosophy 54 (4):490-509.
    In contemporary democracies, global capitalism exerts a significant influence over how state power is exercised, raising questions about where political power resides in global politics. This question is important, since our specific considerations about justifiability of political power, i.e. political legitimacy, depend on how we characterize political power at the global level. As a partial answer to this question, I argue that our notion of global political legitimacy should be reoriented to include the structural power of the Transnational Capitalist Class (...)
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  • Realism and Political Normativity.Matt Sleat - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (3):465-478.
    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 (...)
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  • Distinctively Political Normativity in Political Realism: Unattractive or Redundant.Eva Erman & Niklas Möller - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (3):433-447.
    Political realists’ rejection of the so-called ‘ethics first’ approach of political moralists, has raised concerns about their own source of normativity. Some realists have responded to such concerns by theorizing a distinctively political normativity. According to this view, politics is seen as an autonomous, independent domain with its own evaluative standards. Therefore, it is in this source, rather than in some moral values ‘outside’ of this domain, that normative justification should be sought when theorizing justice, democracy, political legitimacy, and the (...)
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  • Political Realism as Methods not Metaethics.Jonathan Leader Maynard - 2022 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (3):449-463.
    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 (...)
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  • Financial Power and Democratic Legitimacy.Janosch Prinz & Enzo Rossi - 2022 - Social Theory and Practice 48 (1):115-140.
    To what extent are questions of sovereign debt a matter for political rather than scientific or moral adjudication? We answer that question by defending three claims. We argue that (i) moral and technocratic takes on sovereign debt tend to be ideological in a pejorative sense of the term, and that therefore (ii) sovereign debt should be politicised all the way down. We then show that this sort of politicisation need not boil down to the crude Realpolitik of debtor-creditor power relations—a (...)
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  • Being realistic and demanding the impossible.Enzo Rossi - 2019 - Constellations 26 (4):638-652.
    Political realism is characterised by fidelity to the facts of politics and a refusal to derive political judgments from pre- political moral commitments. Even when they are not taken to make normative theorising impossible or futile, those characteristics are often thought to engender a conservative slant, or at least a tendency to prefer incremental reformism to radicalism. I resist those claims by distinguishing between three variants of realism—ordorealism, contextual realism, and radical realism—and contrasting them with both non-ideal theory and utopianism. (...)
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  • Is There a Distinctively Political Normativity?Jonathan Leader Maynard & Alex Worsnip - 2018 - Ethics 128 (4):756-787.
    A slew of recent political theorists—many taking their cue from the political writings of Bernard Williams—have recently contended that political normativity is its own kind of normativity, distinct from moral normativity. In this article, we first attempt to clarify what this claim amounts to and then reconstruct and interrogate five major arguments for it. We contend that all these arguments are unconvincing and fail to establish a sense in which political normativity is genuinely separate from morality.
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  • Political realism as ideology critique.Janosch Prinz & Enzo Rossi - 2017 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20 (3):334-348.
    This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. Our focus is a defence of 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 consistently envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem we combine insights from three distant corners of the philosophical landscape: theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams (...)
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  • Legitimacy in Realist Thought.Matt Sleat - 2014 - Political Theory 42 (3):314-337.
    What, if anything, can realism say about the normative conditions of political legitimacy? Must a realist political theory accept that the ability to successfully employ coercive power is equivalent to the right to rule, or can it incorporate normative criteria for legitimacy but without collapsing into a form of moralism? While several critics argue that realism fails to adequately differentiate itself from moralism or that it cannot coherently appeal to normative values so as to distinguish might from right, this article (...)
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  • Realism in political theory.William A. Galston - 2010 - European Journal of Political Theory 9 (4):385-411.
    In recent decades, a ‘realist’ alternative to ideal theories of politics has slowly taken shape. Bringing together philosophers, political theorists, and political scientists, this countermovement seeks to reframe inquiry into politics and political norms. Among the hallmarks of this endeavor are a moral psychology that includes the passions and emotions; a robust conception of political possibility and rejection of utopian thinking; the belief that political conflict — of values as well as interests — is both fundamental and ineradicable; a focus (...)
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  • Philosophy and Real Politics.Raymond Geuss - 2008 - Princeton University Press.
    This book is vigorous in its arguments, displays an impressive historical sweep, and on several occasions gets in the perfect skewering criticism.
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  • Politics and the Imagination.Raymond Geuss - 2009 - Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
    In politics, utopians do not have a monopoly on imagination. Even the most conservative defenses of the status quo, Raymond Geuss argues, require imaginative acts of some kind. In this collection of recent essays, including his most overtly political writing yet, Geuss explores the role of imagination in politics, particularly how imaginative constructs interact with political reality. He uses decisions about the war in Iraq to explore the peculiar ways in which politicians can be deluded and citizens can misunderstand their (...)
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  • The Problem of Political Normativity Understood as Functional Normativity.Erman Eva - 2023 - Journal of Philosophical Research.
    The Problem of Political Normativity Understood as Functional Normativity.
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  • The Sources of Political Normativity: the Case for Instrumental and Epistemic Normativity in Political Realism.Carlo Burelli & Chiara Destri - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (3):397-413.
    This article argues that political realists have at least two strategies to provide distinctively political normative judgements that have nothing to do with morality. The first ground is instrumental normativity, which states that if we believe that something is a necessary means to a goal we have, we have a reason to do it. In politics, certain means are required by any ends we may intend to pursue. The second ground is epistemic normativity, stating that if something is true, this (...)
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  • (1 other version)Human development and alienation in the thought of Karl Marx.Paul Raekstad - 2015 - European Journal of Political Theory (3):1474885115613735.
    Marx's theory of alienation is of great importance to contemporary political developments, due both to the re-emergence of anti-capitalist struggle in Zapatismo, 21st Century Socialism, and the New Democracy Movement, and to the fact that the most important theorists of these movements single out Marx's theory of alienation as critical to their concerns. Despite this renewed practical and theoretical interest, however, these and other writers have been sparing in their accounts of the normative components which the theory of alienation incorporates. (...)
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  • Bernard Williams, realistic liberalism, and the politics of “normativity”.Jorah Dannenberg - 2024 - European Journal of Philosophy 32 (2):489-506.
    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 (...)
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  • Politics and the vocation of political theory.Paul Raekstad - 2022 - Constellations 29 (4):447-459.
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  • Real Politics and Metaethical Baggage.Sebastian Nye - 2015 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (5):1083-1100.
    So-called 'realists' have argued that political philosophers should engage with real politics, but that mainstream 'non-realist' political philosophers fail to do so. Perhaps surprisingly, many of the discussions between realists and their critics have not drawn much on debates in metaethics. In this paper, I argue that this is an oversight. There are important connections between the realism/non-realism debate and certain controversies in metaethics. Both realism and non-realism come with metaethical baggage. By considering several arguments that could be made for (...)
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  • (1 other version)Political normativity and the functional autonomy of politics.Carlo Burelli - 2022 - European Journal of Political Theory 21 (4):627-649.
    This article argues for a new interpretation of the realist claim that politics is autonomous from morality and involves specific political values. First, this article defends an original normative source: functional normativity. Second, it advocates a substantive functional standard: political institutions ought to be assessed by their capacity to select and implement collective decisions. Drawing from the ‘etiological account’ in philosophy of biology, I will argue that functions yield normative standards, which are independent from morality. For example, a ‘good heart’ (...)
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  • (1 other version)Human development and alienation in the thought of Karl Marx.Paul Raekstad - 2018 - European Journal of Political Theory 17 (3):300-323.
    Marx's theory of alienation is of great importance to contemporary political developments, due both to the re-emergence of anti-capitalist struggle in Zapatismo, 21st Century Socialism, and the New Democracy Movement, and to the fact that the most important theorists of these movements single out Marx's theory of alienation as critical to their concerns. Despite this renewed practical and theoretical interest, however, these and other writers have been sparing in their accounts of the normative components which the theory of alienation incorporates. (...)
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  • Realism and real politics. The gap between promise and practice in Bernard Williams’ realism.Janosch Prinz - 2023 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (3):335-355.
    This paper seeks to show that Bernard Williams’ approach to legitimacy falls short of its aspirations in ways that cast doubt on its fitness for guiding the practice of future realist political theory. More precisely, the paper focuses on the shortcomings of Williams’ realism in establishing a connection to (the practices of) politics, and on how to redeem those shortcomings in a way that would render them suitable for guiding future realist political theory. The first substantive section of the paper (...)
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  • Realist legitimacy: What kind of internalism?Ben Cross - forthcoming - Philosophy and Social Criticism.
    Most realist theories of legitimacy are internalist theories, meaning that they regard legitimacy as a function of how subjects view their own rulers. However, some realists seek to qualify their internalism by holding that legitimacy is not simply a matter of whether subjects accept their rulers’ exercise of power. According to one such view, legitimacy requires that rulers’ power be ‘acceptable’ to subjects, in the sense that it can be justified on the basis of values that they accept. Call this (...)
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  • (1 other version)Political normativity and the functional autonomy of politics.Carlo Burelli - 2022 - European Journal of Political Theory 21 (4):627-649.
    This article argues for a new interpretation of the realist claim that politics is autonomous from morality and involves specific political values. First, this article defends an original normative source: functional normativity. Second, it advocates a substantive functional standard: political institutions ought to be assessed by their capacity to select and implement collective decisions. Drawing from the ‘etiological account’ in philosophy of biology, I will argue that functions yield normative standards, which are independent from morality. For example, a ‘good heart’ (...)
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  • Distinctively political normativity in political theory.Eva Erman & Niklas Möller - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (6):e12835.
    Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 6, June 2022.
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  • Can political realism be action-guiding?Luke Ulaş - 2023 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (4):528-553.
    Various political realists claim the superior ‘action-guiding’ qualities of their way of approaching normative political theory, as compared to ‘liberal moralism’. This paper subjects that claim to critique. I first clarify the general idea of action-guidance, and identify two types of guidance that a political theory might try to offer – ‘prescriptive action-guidance’ and ‘orienting action-guidance’ – together with the conditions that must be met before we can understand such guidance as having been successfully offered. I then go on to (...)
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  • Political Normativity as Functional Normativity.Carlo Burelli - 2023 - Journal of Philosophical Research 48:169-176.
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