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Abstract
An important strand in the school of thought known as ‘political realism’ is a distancing from, if not a rejection of ‘political moralism,’ the application of moral standards to political phenomena. This initial formulation of realism’s opposition to moralism suggests several distinct theses. One is that moral thinking, as a social phenomenon, is causally subsidiary to political structure. Another is that moral convictions are mere rationalizations of preferences and interests. A third is that proper political thought takes the moral defects of humans as given. Another thesis yet would be that political standards are not ‘applied ethics,’ applications of moral principles applicable to individual behavior. I argue that none of these positions, even if they were correct, would raise any difficulty for the thesis that political arrangements are subject to moral standards of what is right or just.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for discussions of earlier versions of this paper at the workshop, ‘What Is Realism?’ at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, January 2015, workshop on ‘Realisms and Moralisms in Recent Political Philosophy,’ University College, London, August 2015, and APA Eastern Division Meetings, January 2016. Thanks are due to many who were present there, but especially to Amanda Greene and Alison McQueen for long helpful conversations.
Notes
1. Nevertheless, since it might only be obvious once it is made more precise, I press the point at length in ‘Utopophobia,’ (Citation2014).
2. Among many others, I count Carr, Williams, Sangiovanni. Generally, see authors (with references) discussed by Rossi and Sleat (Citation2014).
3. Notice that this question of moralism vs. realism is entirely separate from the question whether political philosophy ought properly to investigate scenarios of full-compliance or high levels of civic or personal virtue. That question can occur perfectly well within the moralist camp, as well as in the realist camp.
4. See Rossi and Sleat, (Ibid. p. 4.) ‘For realists… the point is not that morality is only weakly capable of directing politics, but that political moralism reduces political problems to matters of personal morality.’
5. There is a further challenge here for seeing standards such as social justice as moral standards, namely that it is unclear that any agent is under the requirements, but this is no part of any realist’s point as far as I know. I lay out the difficulty in section 6 of, ‘Prime Justice,’ in Political Utopias, (Citationin press).
6. A very brief guide to some recent sources is ‘Moral Epistemology,’ by Zimmerman (Citation2015).
7. See Williams (Citation2005), Sangiovanni, (Citation2008); Rossi and Sleat, (Ibid.).
8. Even a writer such as Cohen (Citation2008), who aligns himself with the Platonist idea of universal trans-historical standards of morality and justice, does not believe that all there is to moral epistemology is simple intuition of the standards. He writes, “… asking what we think we should do, given these or those factual circumstances, is a fruitful way of determining what our principles are; and sometimes, moreover, responses to actual facts reveal our principles better than our responses to hypothesized facts do, because the actual facts present themselves more vividly to us, and, too, they concentrate the mind better, since they call for actual and not merely hypothetical decisions.”
9. Maybe the modern idea of ethics as (in Geuss’s (Citation2005, p. 63) terms, ‘the immanentist egocentric practical standpoint’ – the fixation on the question ‘what ought I to do?’) – is deeply mistaken, or at least a very incomplete picture of the normative landscape. I await clear development of an alternative conception.
10. I was drawn to this set of issues about moralism and rationalization by Alison McQueen’s instructive paper (McQueen, Citation2016).
11. See Pigden (Citation2014).
12. Marx has a narrow meaning for “superstructure.” “The totality of ... relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.” I use “superstructural” here to mean part of the superstructure itself, or of the “correspond[ing]” “consciousness [which] must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.” My point is its explanatory subsidiarity, on the Marxian view. See Karl Marx, “Preface” to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,1859, any edition.
13. These are often regarded as species of moral anti-realism, but I will avoid that terminology to avoid confusion with the issue of political realism.
14. See, for example, Charles Larmore (Citation2013, p. 295), ‘Describing what ideally should be each person’s due, apart from the question of legitimate coercion, remains an important part of moral philosophy. The point is that political philosophy needs to proceed differently …’
15. Larmore rejects that view, but many realists assert it. See Larmore, (Ibid. p. 294), where he speaks of ‘the moral principles to which political philosophy must appeal.’
16. Waldron (Citation1999, p. 159) writes, plausibly, ‘What is normally understood by politics is that it is an arena in which the members of some group debate and find ways of reaching decisions on various issues in spite of the fact that they disagree about the values and principles that the merits of those issues engage.’
17. ‘… I identify the “first” political question in Hobbesian terms as the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation. It is ‘first’ because solving it is the condition of solving, indeed posing, any others.’ (Ibid. p. 3).
18. Rossi and Sleat, (Citation2014, p. 3).
19. Sangiovanni (Citation2008) and Rossi (Citation2012) both suggest that this captures a strand of realist thinking.
20. Rawls says that his standards of legitimacy (and justice?) apply at least to constitutional democracies. He does not say clearly whether they do or do not also apply to all states as such.
21. Sangiovanni (Citation2008) and James (Citation2012).
22. Rawls’s famous limitation of his principles of justice to constitutional democracies has suggested such a view to many interpreters, though it does not mean that he takes this view. It does leave that possibility open, although there are other parts of his view that might be relevant to the question.
23. ‘… the critical theory principle, [is] that the acceptance of a justification does not count if the acceptance itself is produced by the coercive power which is supposedly being justified …’ (2005, p. 6); For a legitimating account to ‘make sense’ requires that it ‘goes beyond the assertion of power; and we can recognize such a thing because in the light of the historical and cultural circumstances, and so forth, it [makes sense] to us as a legitimation.’ (Ibid. p. 11).
24. We are forced to explore several possibilities rather than try to decide which view is Williams’ own, since he has not said, as far as I know, what legitimacy is – what kind of value is achieved when the critical sense principle is met, or what kind of demand (if not a moral one) the ‘basic legitimation demand’ is meant to be.
25. Consider Larmore (Citationin press) discussion of slavery in ‘The Truth in Political Realism’.