Rationalism in Politics PDF
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| Rationalism in Politics Arguingagainstemergentandevendominanttendenciesofrecentpolitical thought that emphasize the so-called primacy of affect, Peter Steinberger challenges political theorists to take account of important themes in phil- osophyonthetopicofhumanrationality.Heengageswithmajorpropon- entsofpost-Kantianthought,analyticandcontinentalalike,toshowhow political judgment and political action, properly understood, are deeply and definitively grounded in considerations of human reason. Focusing especially on influential arguments in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of action, he seeks to rediscover and reanimate the close connectionbetweensystematicphilosophicalspeculationontheonehand and the theory and practice of politics on the other. The result is a neo- rationalist conception of judgment and action that promises to offer a substantial and compelling account of political enterprise as it plays out intherealworldofpublicaffairs. peter j. steinberger is Robert H. and Blanche Day Ellis Professor of Political Science and Humanities at Reed College, Oregon. His previous booksincludeTheIdeaoftheState(Cambridge,2009)andThePoliticsof Objectivity(Cambridge,2015). Published online by Cambridge University Press Published online by Cambridge University Press Rationalism in Politics peter j. steinberger ReedCollege Published online by Cambridge University Press UniversityPrintingHouse,CambridgeCB28BS,UnitedKingdom OneLibertyPlaza,20thFloor,NewYork,NY10006,USA 477WilliamstownRoad,PortMelbourne,VIC3207,Australia 314–321,3rdFloor,Plot3,SplendorForum,JasolaDistrictCentre, NewDelhi–110025,India 103PenangRoad,#05–06/07,VisioncrestCommercial,Singapore238467 CambridgeUniversityPressispartoftheUniversityofCambridge. ItfurtherstheUniversity’smissionbydisseminatingknowledgeinthepursuitof education,learning,andresearchatthehighestinternationallevelsofexcellence. www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781009204422 DOI:10.1017/9781009204446 ©PeterJ.Steinberger2022 Thispublicationisincopyright.Subjecttostatutoryexception andtotheprovisionsofrelevantcollectivelicensingagreements, noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplacewithoutthewritten permissionofCambridgeUniversityPress. Firstpublished2022 AcataloguerecordforthispublicationisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. ISBN978-1-009-20442-2Hardback CambridgeUniversityPresshasnoresponsibilityforthepersistenceoraccuracy ofURLsforexternalorthird-partyinternetwebsitesreferredtointhispublication anddoesnotguaranteethatanycontentonsuchwebsitesis,orwillremain, accurateorappropriate. Published online by Cambridge University Press For Mo, ma colombe Published online by Cambridge University Press Published online by Cambridge University Press Contents Preface page ix 1 Propositions and PracticalAction 1 1.1 TheMythoftheMental 8 1.2 TacitBeliefandIntelligentPerformance 28 1.3 MemoryandAwareness 42 1.4 PropositionalDiscourse 49 1.5 PoliticalActionasPracticalAction 56 2 Belief,Truth,and Knowledge 67 2.1 ImplicitBelief 68 2.2 TruthandDependence 84 2.3 JustificationandtheProblemofMindandWorld 91 2.4 Holism,Constructivism,andIrrefutability 108 2.5 StructuresofBelief 114 3 Rationalism inPolitics 122 3.1 StructuresofPoliticalBelief 123 3.2 ActionandPerformance 128 3.3 PoliticalTheoryandtheUbiquityofReason 134 3.4 PoliticalExceptionalismandtheProblemofPluralism 150 3.5 RationalisminPolitics 159 Index 176 vii Published online by Cambridge University Press Published online by Cambridge University Press Preface Thisbookisintendedtobeacontributiontothephilosophyofpolitics, its presumed audience composed primarily of political theorists. So much should be apparent from the title, but the point nonetheless needs to be made and reiterated. For as the reader will see, I shall be spending a fair amount of time dealing with matters only indirectly related to politics, including and especially generic problems in the philosophy of action and the philosophy of mind. This would seem to make for a perhaps odd work of political thought, but there are reasons forit. I believe that much contemporary theorizing about politics presup- poses–sometimesexpressly,oftennot–aparticularrangeofpositions that have become influential in the recent philosophical literature and that purport to have powerful implications for our understanding of human conduct, broadly conceived. Such positions emphasize the noncognitiveandnonreflectiveaspectsofpracticaljudgmentandprac- tical action – they reject what is variously called the “intellectualistic fallacy” or the “myth of the mental” – and promote, thereby, a decidedly non-intellectualist and non-rationalist account of our active engagement in the world, including engagement that we would think of as skilled or highly accomplished. This general point of view has been embraced by a variety of otherwise unconnected or loosely con- nected philosophical perspectives, including analytic theories of knowing-how and knowing-that, neo-Heideggerian approaches to the phenomenology of everyday life, materialist conceptions of mind, so-called affect theory, and explorations of the putative difference between “thinking fast” and “thinking slow.” Exactly how such materials have come to influence recent theorizing about politics is not always clear. Occasionally, the connection has been direct and specific;explicittiesbetweenpoliticaltheoryandseriousphilosophical inquiry – though, as I will suggest, profoundly attenuated – have not been entirely severed. More often, however, we seem to be talking ix https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009204446.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press
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