Both for Kant and for Nietzsche, aesthetics must not be considered as a systematic science based merely on logical premises but rather as a set of intuitively attained artistic ideas that constitute or reconstitute the sensible perceptions and supersensible representations into a new whole. Kantian and Nietzschean aesthetics are both aiming to see beyond the forms of objects to provide explanations for the nobility and sublimity of human art and life. We can safely say that Kant and Nietzsche used the (...) dualities of the beautiful/sublime and Apollonian/Dionysian to advocate their general philosophical worldview, and that the initial formation (in Observations and The Birth of Tragedy) and final dissolution (in the Critique of Judgment and Zarathustra and other later works) of these dualities are determined by the gradually established telos of their philosophical endeavor. Therefore, by observing the evolution of these so-called dualities, Kaplama gathers important clues as to how Kant’s and Nietzsche’s aesthetics transformed into different ways to affirm human art and life. On the one hand, Kaplama argues, the Dionysian came to be the heart and soul of Nietzschean aesthetics and ethics, and the Apollonian (or the formal drive of individuation) was reduced into a mere aesthetic criterion. On the other, Kant treats the sublime (which is originally an idea-producing feeling and/or judgment) as a mere appendix to his Critique of Judgment and aesthetic theory teleologically reducing it into its possible moral consequences. This is why Schopenhauer calls the sublime “by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Judgment” which touches on the real problem of aesthetics very closely but does not provide a real solution for it. Kant’s forced teleological move is to make his theory of aesthetic judgment stand as a ‘reaffirmation’ of the earlier ethical justification he believed to have accomplished in the first two Critiques and the Groundwork where he defends an affirmation of human life through a teleological morality centered on the principle of free-will. In contrast, Nietzsche’s aesthetics (particularly the Dionysian) guides his ethics and metaphysics again through defining an ideal human nature without which ethos would be static and meaningless, lacking the ability to move and change and represent the tragic pathos of human life. (shrink)

Both Heraclitus and Democritus, as the philosophers of historia peri phuseôs, consider nature and human character, habit, law and soul as interrelated emphasizing the links between phusis, kinesis, ethos, logos, kresis, nomos and daimon. On the one hand, Heraclitus’s principle of change (panta rhei) and his emphasis on the element of fire and cosmic motion ultimately dominate his ethics reinforcing his ideas of change, moderation, balance and justice, on the other, Democritus’s atomist description of phusis and motion underlies his principle (...) of moderation and his ideas of health and measured life. In this series, particularly referring to the main principles of motion, moderation and justice, I attempt to describe a coherent pre-Socratic ethical perspective based on the Heraclitean and Democritean fragments. I explore the connections between their physics and ethics also borrowing from Nietzsche’s lectures and writings on the Pre-Socratics. I redefine such Heraclitean and Democritean concepts as harmony, order, perfection, health, self-control, contentment, cheerfulness, concord, sound judgment, wisdom, measure and balance and discuss them under the principles of motion (phusis), moderation (sophrosyne) and justice. In doing so, I also expose the relevance of the Heraclitean notion of logos (interpreting it as the underlying categorical principle of transition between phusis and ethos) in bringing together these ideas and principles. Finally, based on this pre-Socratic Weltanschauung, I assess the possibility of a coherent picture of humanity, its nature and conduct as extending from or fitting into or extending-from-when-fitting-into the cosmos of moving forces and atoms. (shrink)

Some artworks are called sublime because of their capacity to move human imagination in a different way than the experience of beauty. The following discussion explores how Van Gogh’s The Starry Night along with some of his other late landscape paintings accomplish this peculiar movement of imagination thus qualifying as sublime artworks. These artworks constitute examples of the higher aesthetic principles and must be judged according to the cosmological-aesthetic criteria for they manage to generate a transition between ethos and phusis (...) and present them in unity. Here, referring to Heraclitean, Kantian, Nietzschean and Heideggerian metaphysics and aesthetics, I propose that the principles of motion and transition be the new cosmologic-aesthetic categories for the judgment of sublime artworks as well as for the understanding of the world (Weltanschauung) they represent. (shrink)

Kant makes a much-unexpected confession in a much-unexpected place. In the Criticism of the third paralogism of transcendental psychology of the first Critique Kant accepts the irrefutability of the Heraclitean notion of universal becoming or the transitory nature of all things, admitting the impossibility of positing a totally persistent and self-conscious subject. The major Heraclitean doctrine of panta rhei makes it impossible to conduct philosophical inquiry by assuming a self-conscious subject or “I,” which would potentially be in constant motion like (...) other thoughts. For it rules out the possibility of completely detached reasoning which necessitates an unchanging state of mind. In this paper, Kaplama uses panta rhei to critically examine the philosophical shortcomings and contradictions of Kantian and Enlightenment ethics. In his examination, he specifically focuses on the teleological nature of Kant’s principle of freedom and ideal of moral autonomy which have dominated the Enlightenment thought. By doing so, he argues that it is essentially inaccurate to posit Überlegenheit (the state of being superior to nature) as the foundation of philosophical inquiry mainly because this would contradict the Enlightenment’s claim to constitute a rupture from classic and medieval metaphysics and would render Enlightenment a mere extension of Christian metaphysics. As in Christianity, Überlegenheit presupposes two separate realms, the actual (contingent) and ideal (pure) realms of thought and assumes that the transcendence commences from the level of the late metaphysical/teleological construction of the ‘subject’ who is completely persistent, self-conscious and immune to change. He then substantiates these points with reference to the philosophical roots of ethnic prejudice displayed by the post-Enlightenment colonialists and the missionaries in Fiji and the Pacific. This brief critical examination of the post-Enlightenment ethnocentrism will be conducted under the following three points: a) On the Enlightenment’s teleological and universalistic understanding of humanity and the concept of progress versus the Fijian concepts of the continuity of life, regeneration, and reproduction b) On the Enlightenment’s ideal of the free-willing and independent individual subject versus the Fijian ideas of 'the cord', reciprocity, and vanua, and c) On the Enlightenment’s (and Christianity’s) strict dualism between physics and metaphysics, nature and human mind, body and soul versus the Fijian bio-centrism, the sanctity of vanua and the cosmological concept of mana. (shrink)

This paper is founded on a close reading of Kant’s Opus Postumum in order both to explore the essential motivation that drove Kant to write a last comprehensive magnum opus and, by doing so, to show the essential link between his aesthetics and the idea of Übergang, the title of this last work. For this work contains not only his dynamical theory of matter defining motion as preliminary to the notions of space and time, and the advanced version of his (...) philosophy of natural science, but also his arguments for the phenomenal validity of the metaphysical foundations, his teachings on the aesthetic human faculties of judgment and Anschauung, and the discernment of the transcendental philosophy from Platonic idealism carrying it to a cosmological level, i.e. Kant’s insertion of the concept of cosmotheoros. Since the process of transition is an aesthetic process based on human senses, intuitions and judgments, the argument will follow that in order to explicate Übergang, we need to reconcile cosmology, as the oldest branch of philosophy dealing with the interactions between the cosmic forces and the ways they affect human life, with aesthetics, as the youngest branch of philosophy dealing with how we sense, intuit and judge the form and motion of matter. Therefore, in the last analysis, Übergang becomes rather a cosmologic-aesthetic principle similar to the Heraclitean logos. Another building block of the paper is the fruitful comparison between the Kantian sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian, which are going to be construed as the aesthetic theories on human understanding representing the transition from nature to art. For they are not only conceptual – aesthetic but also dynamic – cosmological theories due to their reference both to nature and to human nature. (shrink)

This book is founded on a close reading of Kant’s Opus Postumum in order both to explore the essential motivation that drove Kant to write a last comprehensive magnum opus and, by doing so, to show the essential link between his aesthetics and the idea of Übergang, the title of this last work. For this work contains not only his dynamical theory of matter defining motion as preliminary to the notions of space and time, and the advanced version of his (...) philosophy of natural science, but also his arguments for the phenomenal validity of the metaphysical foundations, his teachings on the aesthetic human faculties of judgment and Anschauung, and the discernment of the transcendental philosophy from Platonic idealism carrying it to a cosmological level, i.e. Kant’s insertion of the concept of cosmotheoros. Since the process of transition is an aesthetic process based on human senses, intuitions and judgments, the argument will follow that in order to explicate Übergang, we need to reconcile cosmology, as the oldest branch of philosophy dealing with the interactions between the cosmic forces and the ways they affect human life, with aesthetics, as the youngest branch of philosophy dealing with how we sense, intuit and judge the form and motion of matter. Therefore, in the last analysis, Übergang becomes rather a cosmologic-aesthetic principle similar to the Heraclitean logos. Another building block of the book is the fruitful comparison between the Kantian sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian, which are going to be construed as the aesthetic theories on human understanding representing the transition from nature to art. For they are not only conceptual – aesthetic but also dynamic – cosmological theories due to their reference both to nature and to human nature. Finally, Cosmological Aesthetics employs the principles of transition and motion to analyze Van Gogh’s Starry Night in an excursus. (shrink)

This two-chapter work brings together Heraclitus, Kant, and Nietzsche in an effort to explore transition and motion, two concepts derived from Kant’s Opus Postumum that the author argues are indications of Kant’s cosmological-aesthetic approach in his late work. At times, the book seems to want to be a work of Kant scholarship, addressing the question of the role of the Opus Postumum in the Kantian corpus. Indeed, the most sustained engagements with secondary literature occur in the sections on Kant. At (...) other times, however, Erman Kaplama extracts the notion of transition from Kant’s work in order to make broader claims about the way in which the human faculty of sense intuition... (shrink)

Although the concept of “AI governance” is frequently used in the debate, it is still rather undertheorized. Often it seems to refer to the mechanisms and structures needed to avoid “bad” outcomes and achieve “good” outcomes with regard to the ethical problems artificial intelligence is thought to actualize. In this article we argue that, although this outcome-focused view captures one important aspect of “good governance,” its emphasis on effects runs the risk of overlooking important procedural aspects of good AI governance. (...) One of the most important properties of good AI governance is political legitimacy. Starting out from the assumptions that AI governance should be seen as global in scope and that political legitimacy requires at least a democratic minimum, this article has a twofold aim: to develop a theoretical framework for theorizing the political legitimacy of global AI governance, and to demonstrate how it can be used as a compass for critially assessing the legitimacy of actual instances of global AI governance. Elaborating on a distinction between “governance by AI” and “governance of AI” in relation to different kinds of authority and different kinds of decision-making leads us to the conclusions that much of the existing global AI governance lacks important properties necessary for political legitimacy, and that political legitimacy would be negatively impacted if we handed over certain forms of decision-making to artificial intelligence systems. (shrink)

The Problem of Political Normativity Understood as Functional Normativity.

There has been contemporary disagreement about Aristotle`s substance theory. This disagreement has mainly focused on the problem of whether Aristotelian forms are particular or universal. According to the majority of the criteria which are stipulated by Aristotle in Metaphysics Zeta, forms are substances. However, Aristotle also explicitly outlines in the Zeta, and especially in chapters 13 and 16, that no universal can be a substance. At these points in his work, Aristotle should have been clearer regarding whether forms are universals (...) or particulars. In terms of the conclusion of Chapter 13 of Zeta, as well as some other criteria, one may conclude that, if the substance is form, then it should be particular. There are many instances, however, where Aristotle says that since universals are knowable, particulars cannot be known. It seems that if substances are particulars, it is hard to see how they can be knowable. Furthermore, if they are universal, it is hard to say whether particular forms are substances. Since Aristotle never mentioned whether forms could be both universal and particular, this causes difficulties. To examine this problem in more depth, I will not only analyse some textual evidence which is often used to justify the view that forms are universal, but also some textual evidence which is used to justify the view that forms are particular. In so doing, I will also identify some possible solutions regarding the problem of the status of forms in Aristotle`s substance theory. Lastly, I will suggest that individual forms are substances because they are instances of universals and, hence, may be knowable. I will support my view by employing the neo-Aristotelian substance theory posited by Jonathan Lowe; namely, the “Four-Category Ontology.”. (shrink)

Los poetas en la época prehispánica nahua eran llamados cuicapicque que significa “creadores de cantos” o “forjadores de cantos”, se sabe que por poseer el don poético, eran admirados, respetados y su producción fue vasta. Miguel León Portilla rescató el nombre de veinte de ellos, incluida una mujer, Macuilxochitzin a quien trataremos de conocer a través del análisis y reflexión que se desprende del único canto que de ella se tiene. ¿Quién era? ¿Por qué solamente se tiene este poema de (...) la época prehispánica atribuido a una mujer? ¿Qué hay más allá del hecho histórico al que alude? Es lo que trataremos de responder a lo largo de este trabajo, insuficiente creemos para conocer el legado femenino de las forjadoras de cantos de aquella época pero que intentaremos al menos, rescatar su voz en una sociedad donde el valor de “lo femenino” y por ende, la importancia de la mujer, aún está por comprenderse. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 6, June 2022.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 6, June 2022.

Political realists’ rejection of the so-called ‘ethics first’ approach of political moralists, has raised concerns about their own source of normativity. Some realists have responded to such concerns by theorizing a distinctively political normativity. According to this view, politics is seen as an autonomous, independent domain with its own evaluative standards. Therefore, it is in this source, rather than in some moral values ‘outside’ of this domain, that normative justification should be sought when theorizing justice, democracy, political legitimacy, and the (...) like. For realists the question about a distinctively political normativity is important, because they take the fact that politics is a distinct affair to have severe consequences for both how to approach the subject matter as such and for which principles and values can be justified. Still, realists have had a hard time clarifying what this distinctively political normativity consists of and why, more precisely, it matters. The aim of this paper is to take some further steps in answering these questions. We argue that realists have the choice of committing themselves to one of two coherent notions of distinctively political normativity: one that is independent of moral values, where political normativity is taken to be a kind of instrumental normativity; another where the distinctness still retains a justificatory dependence on moral values. We argue that the former notion is unattractive since the costs of commitment will be too high, and that the latter notion is sound but redundant since no moralist would ever reject it. Furthermore, we end the paper by discussing what we see as the most fruitful way of approaching political and moral normativity in political theory. (shrink)

Lacan wrote and generated ideas at the intersection of structuralism and poststructuralism, and the question of where he stands in this intersection is crucial to understand his conception of the subject. This essay takes the multiplicity of views on Lacan as a structuralist and a poststructuralist as its starting point and aims to weigh these labels against the background of his specific theories and views. We suggest that in his early phase when he was categorised as a structuralist, he had (...) the seeds of his later poststructuralist phase, and when he was generating his poststructuralist ideas, he was building them on his structuralist legacy. This evolution is similar to that of Roland Barthes in that he establishes an ongoing dialog between structuralism and poststructuralism: he is both a threshold figure suggesting an amalgam of these movements, but he is also a dividing figure as his evolution points at the unbridgeable rupture between structuralism and poststructuralism. (shrink)

In response to the democratic boundary problem, two principles have been seen as competitors: the all-affected interests principle and the all-subjected principle. This article claims that these principles are in fact compatible, being justified vis-à-vis different functions, accommodating different values and drawing on different sources of normativity. I call this a ‘function-sensitive’ view. More specifically, I argue that the boundary problem draws attention to the decision functions of democracy and that two values are indispensable when theorizing how to regulate these (...) functions: procedural fairness and political autonomy. While the value of procedural fairness is best promoted through a version of the all-affected interests principle, applied to decision making generally, it is argued that political autonomy is best promoted through a version of the all-subjected principle, applied to coercive decision making specifically. The article concludes by drawing out some practical implications of the function-sensitive view for the case of immigration and border controls. (shrink)

The creation of increasingly complex artificial intelligence (AI) systems raises urgent questions about their ethical and social impact on society. Since this impact ultimately depends on political decisions about normative issues, political philosophers can make valuable contributions by addressing such questions. Currently, AI development and application are to a large extent regulated through non-binding ethics guidelines penned by transnational entities. Assuming that the global governance of AI should be at least minimally democratic and fair, this paper sets out three desiderata (...) that an account should satisfy when theorizing about what this means. We argue, first, that an analysis of democratic values, political entities and decision-making should be done in a holistic way; second, that fairness is not only about how AI systems treat individuals, but also about how the benefits and burdens of transformative AI are distributed; and finally, that justice requires that governance mechanisms are not limited to AI technology, but are incorporated into a range of basic institutions. Thus, rather than offering a substantive theory of democratic and fair AI governance, our contribution is metatheoretical: we propose a theoretical framework that sets up certain normative boundary conditions for a satisfactory account. (shrink)

An intensified discussion on the role of normative ideals has re-emerged in several debates in political philosophy. What is often referred to as “ideal theory,” represented by liberal egalitarians such as John Rawls, is under attack from those that stress that political philosophy at large should take much more seriously the nonideal circumstances consisting of relations of domination and power under which normative ideals, principles, and ideas are supposed to be applied. While the debate so far has mainly been preoccupied (...) with defending or rejecting ideal theory through a defense or rejection of a specific ideal theory, this paper instead focuses on a number of general philosophical concerns on which the critique relies. More specifically, it brings up for scrutiny, and ultimately rejects, three charges against ideal theory: the charge that ideal theory is not action-guiding, that ideal theory is impossible, and that ideal theory is distorting. By investigatingthese charges in tandem, the paper shows that the criticism against ideal theory is premised on assumptions about the relationships between thought and action and between concepts and the world for which there is little or no support. (shrink)

Although the discussion about feasibility in political theory is still in its infancy, some important progress has been made in the last years to advance our understanding. In this paper, we intend to make a contribution to this growing literature by investigating the proper place of feasibility considerations in political theory. A motivating force behind this study is a suspicion that many presumptions made about feasibility in several current debates—such as that between practice-independence and practice-dependence, ideal and non-ideal theory, and (...) political moralism and political realism—are too rigid and underestimate the numerous different ways in which feasibility concerns may enter into our theorizing. To chisel out this feasibility space, our aim is to suggest two metatheoretical constraints on normative political principles as intuitively plausible, the so-called ‘fitness constraint’ and the ‘functional constraint’, through which we elucidate five central aspects for determining proper feasibility constraints of an account in political theory. (shrink)

In a previous article, we unpacked the so-called “ethics first premise”—the idea that ethics is “prior” to politics when theorizing political legitimacy— that is denied by political realists. We defended a “justificatory” reading of this premise, according to which political justification is irreducibly moral in the sense that moral values are among the values that ground political legitimacy. We called this the “necessity thesis.” In this paper we respond to two challenges that Robert Jubb and Enzo Rossi raise against our (...) proposal. Their first claim is that our argument for the necessity thesis is question begging, since we assume rather than show that freedom and equality are moral values. The second claim is that Bernard Williams’s Basic Legitimacy Demand demonstrates the possibility of giving political legitimacy a non-moral foundation, since it allows for a distinction to be made between politics and sheer domination. We refute both claims. (shrink)

The question of what role social and political practices should play in the justification of normative principles has received renewed attention in post-millennium political philosophy. Several current debates express dissatisfaction with the methodology adopted in mainstream political theory, taking the form of a criticism of so-called ‘ideal theory’ from ‘non-ideal’ theory, of ‘practice-independent’ theory from ‘practice-dependent’ theory, and of ‘political moralism’ from ‘political realism’. While the problem of action-guidance lies at the heart of these concerns, the critics also share a (...) number of methodological assumptions. Above all, their methodology is practice-dependent in the sense that an existing practice is assumed to put substantial limitations on the appropriate normative principles for regulating it. In other words, we cannot formulate and justify an appropriate principle without first understanding the practice this principle is supposed to govern. The aim of this paper is to map out and analyze the common denominators of these debates with regard to methodological commitments. We will investigate how this practice-dependent method may be understood and motivated. In particular, we point to challenges that must be met in order for the position to remain both distinct and attractive. (shrink)

IntroductionIn recent years, there has been something of an explosion of news stories about various college and university campuses across North America experiencing heightened levels of political advocacy and political unrest. Visible examples include the “canceling” of invited speakers who have been deemed offensive by select student groups1 or petitions calling for the removal of instructors who have been accused of using harmful language.2 While these examples shed light on some of the more intense political debates circulating in higher educational (...) institutions, they are also newsworthy stories precisely because they suggest strong divisiveness in worldviews in action—the contradiction between different…. (shrink)

The practice-dependent approach to justice has received a lot of attention in post-millennium political philosophy. It has been developed in different directions and its normative implications have been criticized, but little attention has been directed to the very distinction between practice-dependence and practice-independence and the question of what theoretically differentiates a practice-dependent account from mainstream practice-independent accounts. The core premises of the practice-dependent approach, proponents argue, are meta-normative and methodological. A key feature is the presumption that a concept of justice (...) is dependent on the function or aim of the social practices to which it is supposed to be applied. Closely related to this meta-normative thesis is an interpretive methodology for deriving principles of justice from facts about existing practices, in particular regarding their point and purpose. These two premises, practice-dependent theorists claim, differentiate their account since they are not accepted by practice-independent accounts and they justify different principles of justice than practice-independent accounts. Our aim in this article is to refute both and, demonstrating that practice-independent accounts may indeed accept the meta-normative and methodological premises of the practice-dependent accounts, and that we are given no theoretical reason to think that practice-dependent accounts justify other principles of justice for a practice than do practice-independent accounts. In other words, practice-dependent theorists have not substantiated their claim that practice-dependence is theoretically differentiated from mainstream accounts. When practice-dependent proponents argue for other principles of justice than mainstream theorists, it will be for the usual reason in normative theory: their first-order normative arguments differ. (shrink)

While methodological and metatheoretical questions pertaining to feasibility have been intensively discussed in the philosophical literature on feasibility and justice in recent years, these discussions have not permeated the debate on global democracy. The overall aim in this paper is to demonstrate the fruitfulness of importing some of the advancements made in this literature into the debate on global democracy as well as to develop aspects that are relevant for explaining the role of feasibility in normative political theory. This is (...) done by pursuing two arguments. First, to advance the work on the role of feasibility, we suggest two metatheoretical constraints on normative political theorizing as intuitively plausible – the ‘fitness constraint’ and the ‘functional constraint’ – which elucidate a number of aspects relevant for determining proper feasibility constraints of an account in political theory. Second, to illustrate the usefulness of this feasibility framework, we sketch an account of global democracy consisting of normative principles which respond differently to these aspects and thus are tied to different feasibility constraints as well as exemplify how it may be applied in practice. (shrink)

The central ideas coming out of the so-called pragmatic turn in philosophy have set in motion what may be described as a pragmatic turn in normative political theory. It has become commonplace among political theorists to draw on theories of language and meaning in theorising democracy, pluralism, justice, etc. The aim of this paper is to explore attempts by political theorists to use theories of language and meaning for such normative purposes. Focusing on Wittgenstein's account, it is argued that these (...) attempts are unsuccessful. It is shown that pragmatically influenced political theorists draw faulty epistemological, ontological and semantic conclusions from Wittgenstein's view in their normative theorising, and it is argued that pragmatically influenced theories of language and meaning, however full of insight, cannot be put to substantial normative use in political theory. The general scope of the thesis is motivated by pointing to the general form of the argument and by moving beyond Wittgenstein to other philosophers of mind and language, illustrating how similar overextensions are made with regard to Robert Brandom's theory of language and meaning. (shrink)

During the last couple of decades, concurrently with an increased awareness of the complexity of ethical conflicts, political theorists have directed attention to how constitutional democracy should cope with a fact of incommensurable doctrines. Poststructuralists such as Chantal Mouffe claim that ethical conflicts are fundamentally irreconcilable, which is indeed a view shared by many liberal theorists. The question of whether ethical conflicts are in principle irreconcilable is an important one since the answer has implications for what democratic institutions are desirable. (...) In light of this question the article investigates the notion of conflict in agonistic pluralism and discourse theory. At first glance, Mouffe’s agonism seems apt to accommodate ethical conflict in democratic governance, since it focuses on conflict as the core of politics, whereas Habermasian deliberative democracy seems inappropriate for this task, as it focuses on consensus. However, through an inquiry into the conditions of conflict this article will argue the opposite, namely, that conflict cannot be adequately understood within Mouffe’s agonistic framework. The thesis defended is (1) that discourse theory offers a more accurate account of conflict than agonistic theory because it embraces the idea that deliberation is constitutive of conflict, and (2) that some of Habermas’ assumptions concerning ethical discourse need to be revised in order for his democratic theory to fully accommodate this insight. (shrink)

In recent years, some political realists have argued that there is a “distinctively political normativity” which should be used when construing and justifying political theories. Among realists focusing on a distinctively political normativity, one can identify two approaches. On the “moral view,” it is explicitly acknowledged that moral norms have a role to play in political normativity. On the “non-moral view,” distinctively political normativity is understood in terms of a non-moral kind of practical normativity. The non-moral view has received severe (...) criticism, not least pertaining to its instrumental versions. Recently, however, Carlo Burelli has attempted to develop a realist account that is faithful to the non-moral view, but which is said to avoid the criticism directed against non-moral accounts in general, and the purely instrumental ones, in particular. Burelli offers a functional account of distinctively political normativity, according to which the function of providing binding collective decisions generates a normative standard that is independent of morality. Despite its many innovative features, however, we argue that it fails with regard to the most pressing concern, which is not whether functional normativity is genuine normativity, but whether it is the right normativity for its assigned role. (shrink)

The central ideas coming out of the so-called pragmatic turn in philosophy have set in motion what may be described as a pragmatic turn in normative political theory. It has become commonplace among political theorists to draw on theories of language and meaning in theorising democracy, pluralism, justice, etc. The aim of this paper is to explore attempts by political theorists to use theories of language and meaning for such normative purposes. Focusing on Wittgenstein's account, it is argued that these (...) attempts are unsuccessful. It is shown that pragmatically influenced political theorists draw faulty epistemological, ontological and semantic conclusions from Wittgenstein's view in their normative theorising, and it is argued that pragmatically influenced theories of language and meaning, however full of insight, cannot be put to substantial normative use in political theory. The general scope of the thesis is motivated by pointing to the general form of the argument and by moving beyond Wittgenstein to other philosophers of mind and language, illustrating how similar overextensions are made with regard to Robert Brandom's theory of language and meaning. (shrink)

A shared presumption among practice-dependent theorists is that a principle of justice is dependent on the function or aim of the practice to which it is supposed to be applied. In recent contributions to this debate, the condition of epistemic uncertainty plays a significant role for motivating and justifying a practice-dependent view. This paper analyses the role of epistemic uncertainty in justifying a practice-dependent approach. We see two kinds of epistemic uncertainty allegedly playing this justificatory role. What we call ‘normative (...) epistemic uncertainty’ emerges from dealing with the problem of value uncertainty in justifying applied principles when our higher-level principles are open-textured, that is, when their content is too vague or unclear to generate determinate prescriptions. What we call ‘descriptive epistemic uncertainty’ emerges from dealing with uncertainty about empirical facts, such as the problem of moral assurance, that is, the problem that the requirements of justice cannot go beyond arrangements that we can know with reasonable confidence that we can jointly establish and maintain. In both cases, practice-dependent theorists conclude that the condition of epistemic uncertainty justifies a practice-dependent approach, which puts certain restrictions on theorizing regulative principles and has wide-ranging practical implications for the scope of justice. Our claim in this paper is that neither kind of epistemic uncertainty justifies a practice-dependent approach. (shrink)

The first systematic analysis of current debates surrounding the role of practice in political theory Should social and political practices should play a role in the justification of normative political principles? In several sub-domains of political theory, theorists have suggested that practices constrain principles in various ways. This book joins five key debates in the current theoretical literature that have been largely taking place in isolation and identifies common strands of argument and their shared problems. By illuminating these connections and (...) cross-fertilising key debates in the current theoretical literature, it develops a unified way forward for practice-based political theory. (shrink)

The question of whether global democracy requires a world state has with few exceptions been answered with an unequivocal ‘No’. A world state, it is typically argued, is neither feasible nor desirable. Instead, different forms of global governance arrangements have been suggested, involving non-hierarchical and multilayered models with dispersed authority. The overall aim of this paper is to addresses the question of whether global democracy requires a world state, adopting a so-called ‘function-sensitive’ approach. It is shown that such an approach (...) is equipped to resist the predominant binary view of a world state and offer a more differentiated and nuanced answer to this question. In brief, a basic presumption of a function-sensitive approach is that the content, justification and status of principles of democracy are dependent on the aim they are set out to achieve, what functions they are intended to regulate (e.g., decision-making, implementation, enforce... (shrink)