Political realism as ideology critique

Abstract

This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. We defend 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 envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem, we combine insights from theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams and other realists, Critical Theory, and analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology and social construction. The upshot is an account of realism as empirically informed critique of social and political phenomena. We reject a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so provide an alternative to the anti-empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise.

Keywords:

• Political realism
• ideology critique
• Bernard Williams
• critical theory

View correction statement:

Erratum

Acknowledgements

We thank Andy Sabl, Rahul Sagar, Paul Sagar and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments. Enzo Rossi presented a version of this paper at the VU University Amsterdam, and some material from it at the National University of Singapore. Janosch Prinz would like to thank audiences at Universities of Amsterdam, London and South Wales for their helpful comments on earlier versions of arguments used in this paper.

Notes

1. The classical view is closely related to a long-standing realist tradition in political thought (Dyson, 2005; McQueen, forthcoming; Rossi & Sleat, 2014), and it wishes to return political theory to its traditional blend of descriptive and normative elements, against the ‘normativist’ (Prinz, 2015b) tendencies of mainstream contemporary approaches.

2. Whether theorising without pre-political moral commitments is itself appealing is a question to do with the appeal of realism itself.

3. For comparable points see Honig & Stears, 2011.

4. This, however, does not imply that realism is exclusively a methodological stance, as the way in which political positions are supported through moralism and realism differ, and self-reflection is crucial here, as we argue below.

5. And the various exegetic extensions of it that have been recently put forward (e.g. Hall 2015, Sagar, 2014, Sleat, 2013a, ch. 5).

6. Moreover, for reasons we shall introduce in the next section, critics of ideology ought to be weary of merely descriptive conceptual analysis.

7. Many of the texts in which Williams puts forward his political realism are posthumous and unfinished; so part of what we are trying to do here is simply taking Williams’ position in one of the directions it might have been taken, had he had the chance to develop it fully.

8. We refer to all mental states that support politically salient attitudes and actions as ‘beliefs’, but we remain neutral on the exact nature of this type of mental content (Gendler, 2008; Stanley, 2015, pp. 186–193).

9. This epistemic flaw does not necessarily connect to conservatism and status quo bias. Radicals and revolutionaries could equally resist (and have in fact resisted) rational belief revision. However, our primary concern (if only temporarily) is with instances of resistance to rational belief revision that have conservative effects, given this paper’s focus on realism’s potential for overcoming status quo bias. Not only are such instances of ideology currently the most pervasive, reflecting the interests of elites, they are also particularly salient for probing the critical potential of realist political theory.

10. ‘Normativism’ is a term of art of recent Critical Theory and Hans Sluga’s Wittgenstein-inspired criticism of analytical political philosophy (Sluga, 2014, introduction and chapter 1). It is close but not entirely overlapping with the realists’ ‘moralism’.

11. This is a specificity of immanent critique (at its limit): ‘In contrast to internal critique, immanent critique is not only directed against the contradiction between norm and reality (the lack of the realisation of norms in reality), but it is rather directed against the internal contradiction of reality and of the norms which constitute reality.’ (Jaeggi, 2014, p. 291; our translation).