Metaethics as Dead Politics? On Political Normativity and Justification

Many political realists endorse some notion of political normativity. They think that there are certain normative claims about politics that do not depend on moral premises. The most prominent moralist objections to political normativity have been metaethical: specifically, that political normativit...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cross, Ben (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: 2024
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2024, Volume: 27, Issue: 3, Pages: 319-335
Further subjects:B Political normativity
B Instrumental normativity
B political realism
B Artificial Intelligence
B Bernard williams
B Marxism
B Ideology critique
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Many political realists endorse some notion of political normativity. They think that there are certain normative claims about politics that do not depend on moral premises. The most prominent moralist objections to political normativity have been metaethical: specifically, that political normativity is not genuinely normative; and that it is incapable of justifying normative claims. In this article, I criticize the latter metaethical objection. I argue that the objection presupposes a notion of ‘justification’ that renders it something that is no longer necessarily valuable to realists. I then extend this argument to show that all metaethical objections to political normativity are unsuccessful. Furthermore, insofar as these metaethical objections purport to constrain the types of politics that realists endorse, realists should regard them as another expression of what Raymond Geuss calls ‘dead politics’.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-024-10436-1