Analytics and continentals: Divided by nature but united by praxis?

Abstract

This article makes four claims. First, that the analytic/Continental split in political theory stems from an unarticulated disagreement about human nature, with analytics believing we have an innate set of mostly compatible moral and political inclinations, and Continentals seeing such things as alterable products of historical contingency. Second, that we would do better to talk of Continental-political-theory versus Rawlsian-political-philosophy, given that the former avoids arguments over principles, whilst the latter leaves genuine analytic philosophy behind. Third, that Continentals suffer from a lack of such arguments, even by their own lights, whilst Rawlsians suffer from inconsistencies within the thought-patterns (e.g. conflicting intuitions and judgements) on which their principles depend. Fourth, that there is an alternative method-'normative behaviourism'-that at least tries to move beyond the problems of both approaches, whilst sharing an idea of 'praxis' with the first, and an idea of deriving-principles-from-existing-judgements with the second.

Rawls’ methodological blueprint

“…This context of apparently restricted normativity can be described in various ways (cf. Barry, 1990; Floyd, 2016; Wolff, 2013). One might talk of the heyday of ‘ordinary language philosophy’ or ‘linguistic philosophy’, or of ‘analytic’, as opposed to ‘analytical’ philosophy, or of course of ‘logical positivism’, as Laslett does.…”

“…We are only contemplating revisions to justification via reflective equilibrium in the sense of changing its inputs (so one might even say that this would not change it all, but would only change our theory of ‘considered judgements’). We are not, for example, contemplating the ‘continental’ view, according to which every judgement is merely a construction open to re/de-construction (Floyd, 2016), or the unlikely idea of deriving political principles, not from patterns in the way that we think , but from patterns in the way that people behave in response to different political conditions (Floyd, 2011). And that, I think, is unsurprising.…”

Beyond the search for the subject: An anti-essentialist ontology for liberal democracy

“…This synthesis enables an account of human agency that is consistent with poststructuralist critiques, yet serviceable for constructive normative theories of liberal 1 On the extent to which the "death of the subject" is taken for granted in the humanities-and on the pessimistic implications often associated with it-see Ruddick (2015). 2 For a similar view, see Floyd (2015), who writes that the difference between analytic and continental political theory "stems from a basic disagreement concerning human nature… For the Continental, the understandings we have of both ourselves and our surroundings are fundamentally contingent… For the analytic, we should broadly accept the scientific view of both self and environment, which means, in the case of moral and political philosophy, that fundamental principles, rather than being cultural epiphenomena, are more properly seen as natural essences to be discovered and dissected, much as geologists or astronomers study rocks or stars." This seems mostly right, except for one crucial point.…”

“…As this summary indicates, my argument reinforces the growing demand for a return to questions of ontology in normative political theory-i.e., questions about what human beings really are (Floyd, 2015;Frost, 2016;Rosenthal, 2016;White, 2000). Ontological questions tend to blur the line between empirical and normative inquiry, and this has often induced theorists to avoid them.…”

Normative behaviourism as a solution to four problems in realism and non-ideal theory

“…And, in turn, it's also true that mentalist political philosophy might have faced an almost identical problem. If, for example, political principles are to be based on considered judgements (Gaus, 2011, 174), and if such judgements in the past pointed to slavery, sexism, witch-burning, crusades, and so on, then like Rawls you might just have to accept a circular connection between liberal democracy and good political philosophy, given that only under the former do you have the conditions for truly 'considered' judgements, meaning that liberal democracy, in effect, creates the conditions for its own vindication (Floyd, 2016b;Floyd, 2017a).…”