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

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Enzo Rossi
Enzo Rossi
Enzo Rossi
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Abstract

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.
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-024-10142-8
angle from which to diagnose moral ills whose amelioration
would improve the current order, rather than overthrow it
(Haslanger 2012; Stanley 2015).
Radical realism, as we will see, modies the descriptive
agenda of 20th century Western Marxism by pivoting from
explaining social stability to revealing power structures.
And it also takes on the diagnostic and evaluative aims
of the new ideology critique (Kreutz 2023; Prinz & Rossi
2017), yet it does so while eschewing moral commitments
because, like classical Marxism, it considers them a prime
candidate for the very ideological distortions it seeks to
overcome (Rossi 2019; Cross 2022; Aytac & Rossi 2023).
The normative foundations of radical realist critique are
rather to be found in epistemic normativity. In a nutshell,
the idea is to empirically uncover patterns of power self-jus-
tication that negatively aect the epistemic position from
which we make political decisions. To use a toy example,
in a patriarchal society the belief that “father knows best”
can be traced back to paternal inculcation, which makes it
epistemically circular, and so not a reliable guide to politi-
cal decision-making. But what is the epistemic fault here,
exactly? And how can we identify less obvious cases? As
in some readings of classical Marxism (e.g. Miller 1984),
the challenge is to answer those questions so as to show
how a social-scientic description of the world can yield
1 Introduction
Ideology critique, like the Marxism of which it was originally
a part, traditionally eschewed moral commitments, consid-
ering them the purview of bourgeois philosophising. Admit-
tedly this approach was easier to sustain so long as the main
target of the critique was bourgeois philosophising itself, as
in Marx and Engels’ most extensive writings on ideology.
But over the last century or so ideology critique has been
taking on heavier burdens. In the early 20th century, West-
ern Marxism notably turned the study of ideology into a tool
to understand the failure of revolutionary socialism against
fascism (Gramsci 1971). In the second half of that century,
Marxists and post-Marxists turned to a notion of culture to
explain the stability of liberal-democratic orders and the
decline of mass left politics (Hall 1986). More recently still,
what has been called the “new” ideology critique (Sankaran
2020) has largely dropped that explanatory aspiration, and
it has been added to the toolbox of liberalism, as yet another
Enzo Rossi
e.rossi@uva.nl
1 Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam,
Amsterdam Postbus 15578, 1011NB, The Netherlands
Abstract
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 dierentials are often epistemically unwarranted, e.g. due to the inuence of motivated reasoning and
the suppression of critical scrutiny. The paper claries those mechanisms in order to address some recent critiques of radi-
cal realism. The paper then builds on those clarications 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.
Keywords Political realism · Political epistemology · Power · Ideology
Accepted: 18 November 2024
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2024
What Can Epistemic Normativity Tell us About Politics? Ideology,
Power, and the Epistemology of Radical Realism
EnzoRossi1
1 3
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... The way in which a normative political philosophy with a realist slant could support radical projects would consist in showing the epistemic flimsiness of legitimation stories that support existing structures and highlighting the epistemic guarantees of those proposals that defend alternative structures (Rossi 2019, p. 646). In this regard, Enzo Rossi's contribution to this special issue (Rossi 2024) illustrates the differences between liberal realism and radical realism. ...
... It is worth mentioning at this point that certain forms of realism (Prinz & Rossi 2017;Rossi 2019) have resorted to a strategy of justification and critique of the political that maintains certain elements in common with Rawlsian constructivism (in particular, the conviction that it is correct to invoke facts to substantiate normative political theses), but with an important difference: they dispense with the mediation of moral principles, to make political normativity depend directly on the relevant facts and the appropriate methodology, to the point of understanding realism as "empirically informed critique of social and political phenomena" (Prinz & Rossi 2017, 348). The resulting variant of realism would thus dissociate itself from those traditions of critical philosophy that realist philosophers consider insufficiently sensitive to facts (as would be the case of G. Cohen), and from the excessive conservatism that radical realists (Prinz and Rossi 2017;Rossi 2024) attribute to liberal realism. For his part, Sommavilla (2024) places himself within the constructivist tradition. ...
... Despite the temptation of some advocates of realism such as Geuss (2008Geuss ( , 2016 to slim down the normative aspirations of political philosophy, most realists find it necessary to characterize and justify political normativity. It is true that, in line with Williams' criticisms of the "morality system," some tended to set aside the idea of political obligation in favor of being concerned by the evaluation of political principles, institutions, and decisions (see Sleat 2016;McQueen 2017;Rossi 2024). But, at least in this aspect, Williams and other realists seek to safeguard the normative capacities of political philosophy. ...
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