Power, norms and theory. A meta-political inquiry

Abstract

Realism criticizes the idea, central to what may be called ‘the priority view’, that philosophy has the task of imposing from the outside general norms of morality or standards of reasonableness on politics understood as the domain of power. According to realism, political philosophy must reveal the specific standards internal to the political practice of handling power appropriately and as it develops in actual circumstances. Framed in those terms, the debate evokes the idea that political power itself is lacking normativity until such time as norms are devised that govern its use. In contrast, this essay identifies a normative dimension internal to (the conquest and exercise of) power. Power depends on recognition and support in the form of belief. This dependence explains how an interest in power introduces a responsiveness to normative considerations into the domain of politics.

Keywords:

• political normativity
• realism
• violence
• belief
• reasonableness
• truth
• time

Acknowledgements

This essay has undergone many transformations over many years. A first version was already written for a workshop on Glen Newey’s After Politics at the University of Keele in 2008. Later versions were read at a MANCEPT-workshop on Liberal realism organized by Mat Sleat and Derek Edyvane in 2009 and a Political Theory workshop organized in Utrecht by Thomas Fossen and Rutger Claassen. At all these occasions I benefited from discussions with those present. The last version benefited greatly from comments by Glen Newey, Thomas Fossen and fellow-members of Research in Philosophical Philosophy Leuven (RIPPLE). Moreover, I gratefully acknowledge how much of this essay goes even further back – to conversations with Wilfried Goossens.

Notes

1. The debate started with some papers by Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss and with (Newey 2001). For an overview, see (Galston 2010, Philp 2012, Sleat 2013, chap. 2, Rossi and Sleat 2014). For recent stages of the debate, see (Rossi 2012, Erman and Möller 2013, in press, Jubb and Rossi 2015, forthcoming).

2. Just one recent example, (Estlund 2008, p. 2): ‘brute power is not a moral thing. Like a knife, it can be used rightly or wrongly. The moral questions about the use of knives are not much about the details of what knives are like, and the moral questions about the uses of power are not much about the exact nature of actual power’.

3. Corrective remarks may be appeals or guidelines for improvement or they may point out commendable cases for instructional purposes. But for ease of exposition, corrective remarks will here be limited to negative assessments.

4. But see (Heysse 2006).

5. For examples see (Philp 2007 or Sleat 2013).

6. Williams’ realism remained incomplete and was published posthumously. So interpretation is controversial. Nevertheless I do not believe this applies to what is mentioned here. See (Sleat 2010, Bavister-Gould 2014, Hall in press).

7. However he does, at least sometimes, evoke a non-moral, almost Wittgensteinian interpretation; it is the principle to accept if you play the language game of politics or if you count a group within society not as enemies in war but as ‘subjects of the state’, (Williams 2005, p. 5, See also Hall in press).

8. This applies also to the interesting analysis in (Beetham 1991).

9. In this context the Machiavellian appeal to the notion of ‘glory’ is revealing, cf. (Geuss 2005b, Philp 2007): the ambition for glory is not (totally) unselfish, but it is not identical to an ambition for power either. For (Jubb and Rossi 2015, forthcoming) the distinction between politics and domination is conceptual and hence non-moral. This border on the claim that the distinction is self-evident for all reasonable agents but it certainly does not explain why the distinction is of interest to political agents.

10. (Erman and Möller in press, pp. 9–10): ‘To our knowledge, political realists have given little in the way of an unambiguous characterization of [the political and moral domains]’.

11. (Searle 1995, pp. 39–40, Searle 2006, p. 17). Comparison is with n. 2.

12. For this distinction, see (Finlay 2010, p. 334).

13. To be sure, what a political agent is concerned with is the publicly available representations of herself, her political action and her reaction to corrective remarks. But in many circumstances this ensures that these remarks effectively influence her actions (a patriotic politician cannot ignore publicly available criticisms of her patriotism all the time). This trend is similar to what Jon Elster has called the civilizing force of hypocrisy, only here the force need not be civilizing as there is no guarantee that the political agent derives her power from promoting policies that merit being called civilized.

14. Here I am indebted to Glen Newey. Compare also (Markell 2003, pp. 39–45, 48–49, 58–59).

15. This complaint may take inspiration from some considerations of Williams introducing his ‘critical theory test’, (Williams 2002, pp. 219–232, Williams 2005, p. 5).

16. Compare (Williams 1973, p. 148).