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The Importance and Limitation of Epistemic Norms in Political Theory

June 2024
Political Studies Review

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CC BY 4.0

Authors:

Stockholm University

One recent debate in political theory centers on the question of whether there is a distinctively political normativity. According to an influential view, there is a distinctive set of norms that applies specifically to political actions and decisions, which are not grounded in moral normativity. On one version of this non-moral view, political theory is grounded in epistemic normativity (and thus epistemic norms). Theorists identifying as “radical realists” insist that political theorists do not need any moral normativity (and thus moral norms), because epistemic normativity may provide action-guidance for political theory. In this article, we take our point of departure in a critical analysis of this epistemic version of the non-moral view, with the overall aim of analyzing the importance and limitation of epistemic norms in political theory. We argue that epistemic norms are necessary—since a political theory should not rely on empirical falsities—but not sufficient for a successful account in the political domain. Two claims are made: moral norms are essential in the process of political theorizing, both in the form of pre-epistemic norms and in the form of post-epistemic norms. More specifically, we contend, first, that we need moral norms to identify and justify which practices to study when conducting political theorizing, and second, that we need moral norms to tell us how to act in light of our investigation of warranted and unwarranted beliefs.

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[I]f%we%want%people%to%correctly%perceive%the%links%between%general%moral%truths%and%

particular%social%practices,%it%seems%sufJicient%to%eliminate%epistemic%barriers!...%Once%

the%epistemic%obstacles%are%removed,%subjects%should%be%able%to%call%the%legitimacy%of%

dominant%practices%into% question% using%their%general%moral% commitments.%There%is%

no%need%for%the%critic%to%make%additional%claims%about%what%morality%requires.”%(Aytac%

and%Rossi%2022:%4)!

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IV. Conclusion

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What Can Epistemic Normativity Tell us About Politics? Ideology, Power, and the Epistemology of Radical Realism

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2024
Topoi

Enzo Rossi

This paper examines how radical realism, a form of ideology critique grounded in epistemic rather than moral normativity, can illuminate the relationship between ideology and political power. The paper argues that radical realism can have both an evaluative and a diagnostic function. Drawing on reliabilist epistemology, the evaluative function shows how beliefs shaped by power differentials are often epistemically unwarranted, e.g. due to the influence of motivated reasoning and the suppression of critical scrutiny. The paper clarifies those mechanisms in order to address some recent critiques of radical realism. The paper then builds on those clarifications to explore the how tracing the genealogy of legitimation stories can diagnose the distribution of power in society, even if ideology does not play a direct stabilising role. This diagnostic function creates a third position in the debate on ideology between culturalists and classical Marxists, and it can help reconciling aspects of structural and relational theories of power.

Empirical Political Theory: A Template for a Research Design and a Qualified Defense

Article

Feb 2024
Polit Stud Rev

Nahshon Perez

Developments in contemporary analytic political theory have called for political theory to situate itself near political science, to pay attention to political institutions, to follow the research output of the social sciences, and to present sensitivity to method. This empirical and methodological turn has brought about a debate regarding the form and desirability of such empirically grounded political theory. We aim, first, to clarify what the empirical turn in political theory implies for research in political theory. We shall situate such empirically grounded political theory in contemporary analytic political theory, in contemporary analytic political theory’s descriptive and prescriptive steps, and also examine how this turn complements contemporary analytic political theory’s evaluative step. Second, to suggest a defense of this empirical development, as if properly understood, it would assist empirically grounded contemporary analytic political theory to achieve its own stated goals. Third, to provide a template for a research design in empirical contemporary analytic political theory.

The Role of Moral Norms in Political Theory

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2024
Topoi

In the recent debate on political normativity in political philosophy, two positions have emerged among so-called political realists. On the first ‘non-moral’ view, political normativity is understood as orthogonal to moral normativity. On the second ‘filter view’, moral norms and prescriptions may be ‘filtered through’ the realities of politics such that they are altered by politics’ constitutive features. While the former has been severely criticized, the latter has remained underdeveloped and vague. To take the debate on political normativity forward, the aim in this paper is to explore what it could reasonably mean to claim that moral norms are filtered through politics and are aligned with its constitutive features. More specifically, we explore the role of moral norms in political theory. We take our starting-point in Larmore’s work and make two claims. First, we argue against Larmore’s claim – following political realists – that because political philosophy is concerned with the regulation of basic institutions and legal-political orders, it should primarily focus on political legitimacy rather than justice and always focus on legitimacy before justice. In our view, nothing in the constitutive features of politics supports such a conclusion. Second, we argue that any reasonable political theory relies on at least one moral premise, constituted by foundational principles (or values), which are independent of a society or polity. These are more basic than political principles in the sense that they put up the normative boundary conditions for such principles.

Ideology Critique without Morality: A Radical Realist Approach

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2022

What is the point of ideology critique? Prominent Anglo-American philosophers recently proposed novel arguments for the view that ideology critique is moral critique, and ideologies are flawed insofar as they contribute to injustice or oppression. We criticize that view and make the case for an alternative and more empirically oriented approach, grounded in epistemic rather than moral commitments. We make two related claims: (a) ideology critique can debunk beliefs and practices by uncovering how, empirically, they are produced by self-justifying power and (b) the self-justification of power should be understood as an epistemic rather than moral flaw. Drawing on the recent realist revival in political theory, we argue that this genealogical approach has more radical potential, despite being more parsimonious than morality-based approaches. We demonstrate the relative advantages of our view by discussing the results of empirical studies on the contemporary phenomenon of neopatriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa.

What is Distinctive of Political Normativity? From Domain View to Role View

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2022

In the last couple of years, increased attention has been directed at the question of whether there is such a thing as a distinctively political normativity. With few exceptions, this question has so far only been explored by political realists. However, the discussion about a distinctively political normativity raises methodological and meta-theoretical questions of general importance for political theory. Although the terminology varies, it is a widely distributed phenomenon within political theory to rely on a normative source which is said to be political rather than moral, or at least foremost political.

Distinctively Political Normativity in Political Theory

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2022

Recent years' literature on distinctively political normativity raises methodological and meta‐theoretical concerns of importance for political theory. The aim of this article is to identify and critically examine the main positions in this debate as well as to analyze problems and promising ways forward. In brief, we argue that the predominant “non‐moral view” of distinctively political normativity (i.e., the view that political normativity is independent of moral normativity), is problematic in all its three versions. Further, we suggest that a reasonable approach to political normativity should adopt a “moral view” (i.e., the view that political normativity is not independent of moral normativity) and investigate two such approaches: the so‐called “filter approach” and the “role approach.” Although still much in need of further development in political theory, both of them bear promise as accounts which preserve the distinctness of the political domain while acknowledging its status as a moral kind.

Financial Power and Democratic Legitimacy in advance: How to Think Realistically about Public Debt

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2021
Soc Theor Pract

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 conclusion that would leave no room for normative theory, among other problems. Rather, we argue that (iii) in a democratic context, a realist approach to politics centred on what Bernard Williams calls 'The Basic Legitimation Demand' affords a deliberative approach to the normative evaluation of public debt policy options.

Against Realist Ideology Critique

Article

Jan 2025
SOC PHILOS POLICY

Matt Sleat

Is it possible to do ideology critique without morality? In recent years a small group of theorists has attempted to develop such an account and, in doing so, makes claim to a certain sort of “radical realism” distinguished by the ambition to ground political judgments and prescriptions in nonmoral values, principles, or concepts. This essay presents a twofold critique of this realist ideology critique (RIC) by first offering an internal critique of the approach and then arguing that the very attempt to do political theory generally—and ideology critique more specifically—in a way that abjures morality is misguided. In doing so, I contribute both to current debates around “new” ideology critiques and to contested questions about what it means to do political theory realistically.

Fact-Centric Political Theory, Three Ways: Normative Behaviourism, Grounded Normative Theory, and Radical Realism

Article

Mar 2023
Polit Stud Rev

Enzo Rossi

In the last two decades, Anglophone political theory witnessed a renewed interest in social-scientific empirical findings – partly as a reaction against normative theorising centred on the formulation of abstract, intuition-driven moral principles. This brief article begins by showing how this turn has taken two distinct forms: (1) a nonideal theoretical orientation, which seeks to balance the emphasis on moral principles with feasibility and urgency considerations, and (2) a fact-centric orientation, which seeks to ground normative conclusions in empirical results. The core of the article then compares and contrasts three variants of fact-centric political theory: normative behaviourism, grounded normative theory and radical realism. The upshot: normative behaviourism achieves focus on observable behaviour at the cost of status quo bias, grounded normative theory achieves radicalism at the cost of endorsing an activist orientation to theorising and radical realism combines a non-activist orientation with the potential for far-reaching critique of the status quo.

Realism and metanormativity

Article

Mar 2023

Adrian Kreutz

Political realists have argued that ‘the political’ is an autonomous domain with its own distinctive concepts, distinctive methodology, and distinctive ‘source of normativity’. I here explore the metanormative commitments of realism (of the radical realist branch, in particular) and question the viability of exploring the ontology of the normative altogether. I argue that the escape into the metanormative realm was something of a wrong turn within the realism debates – an intellectual error. My central argument, building on recent metatheoretical work on normativity, is meant to discredit the sheer possibility of metanormative distinctness. If realists can neither prove metanormative, nor traditional, nor methodological distinctness, there is a valid question as to its standing. I speculate, perhaps realism is little more than a new semantic label for ‘continental’ practices of social analysis as they leak into the analytic tradition. But then again it can be argued that most contemporary continental thought, and certainly much of what passes as critical theory these days, is thoroughly moralist, anti-positivist, and postmodern, and those sentiments are not shared by radical realists, who are, or so I’ll argue, far more faithful to the modernist tradition of social theory.

Getting Realistic About Action-Guidance: Moralism, Radical Realism and Divisions of Labour

Article

Jan 2023
Polit Stud Rev

Ben Cross

Moralists and radical realists both seem to employ a division of intellectual labour to enable their theories to be action-guiding. Moralists typically distinguish between formulating normative principles and devising suitable means for implementing or approximating them. Radical realists, meanwhile, seem to distinguish between the findings of ideology critique and further political theorising informed by these findings. However, radical realist criticisms of the moralist division of labour may suggest a tu quoque objection to radical realism: if the moralist division of labour is defective, why does the same not also hold for the radical realist division of labour? My aim in this article is to answer this question. I identify two distinct radical realist objections to the moralist division of labour, which I refer to as the seminar room objection and the motivation objection respectively. I then argue that radical realists can deal effectively with these objections if they were to be turned against their version of the division of labour. Hence, radical realists can consistently criticise moralist versions of the division of labour while simultaneously employing their own version.

Political Realism and Epistemic Constraints in advance

Article

Jan 2021
Soc Theor Pract

Ugur Aytac

This article argues that Bernard Williams’ Critical Theory Principle (CTP) is in tension with his realist commitments, i.e., deriving political norms from practices that are inherent to political life. The Williamsian theory of legitimate state power is based on the central importance of the distinction between political rule and domination. Further, Williams supplements the normative force of his theory with the CTP, i.e., the principle that acceptance of a justification regarding power relations ought not to be created by the very same coercive power. I contend that the CTP is an epistemic criterion of reflective (un)acceptability which is not strictly connected to the question of whether people are dominated or not. I show that there are cases of non-domination that fail the epistemic requirements of the CTP.

The Importance and Limitation of Epistemic Norms in Political Theory

Abstract

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Distinctively Political Normativity in Political Theory

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Getting Realistic About Action-Guidance: Moralism, Radical Realism and Divisions of Labour