Social and Political Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction

293 Pages·2017·1.635 MB·English

by  John Christman

Social and Political Philosophy
This accessible book is invaluable to anyone coming to social and political
philosophy for the first time. It provides a broad survey of key social and politi-
cal questions in modern society, as well as clear discussions of the philosophical
issues central to those questions and to political thought more generally. Unique
among books of this kind is a sustained treatment of specifically social philoso-
phy, including topics such as epistemic injustice, pornography, marriage, sexuality,
and the family. The relation between such social questions and specifically
political topics is discussed. These topics include: political authority, economic
justice, the limits of tolerance, considerations of community, race, gender, and
culture in questions of justice, and radical critiques of current political theories.
Updates to the Second Edition emphasize the non-statist areas of the subject and
include two brand new chapters on social philosophy and transnational justice.
This Second Edition also includes revisions throughout and coverage of recent
theoretical discussions and world events.
John Christman is Professor of Philosophy, Political Science, and Women’s Studies
at Penn State University. He is the author of The Politics of Persons: Individual
Autonomy and Socio-historical Selves and The Myth of Property: Toward an Egali-
tarian Theory of Ownership. He is also the editor of The Inner Citadel: Essays on
Individual Autonomy and co-editor (with Joel Anderson) of Autonomy and the
Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays.
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Social and Political
Philosophy
A Contemporary Introduction
Second Edition
John Christman
Second edition published 2018
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First edition published by Routledge 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Christman, John Philip, author.
Title: Social and political philosophy : a contemporary
introduction / John Christman.
Description: 2nd Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series:
Routledge contemporary introductions to philosophy | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017017460 | ISBN 9781138841604 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138841659 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Political science—Philosophy. | Social
sciences—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC JA71 .C485 2017 | DDC 320.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017460
ISBN: 978-1-138-84160-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-84165-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-69332-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman and Gill Sans
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments viii
1 Introduction 1
The Liberal Democratic Paradigm 5
Preliminaries I: Method 7
Preliminaries II: Moral Theory and Political Philosophy 12
Structure of the Book 15
Notes on Further Reading 19
2 Social Philosophy and the Road to the Political 21
What Is Social Philosophy? 22
Critical Social Hermeneutics 23
Social Context and the Role of Social Criticism 24
A Selection of Issues in Social Philosophy 25
Epistemic Injustice 25
Pornography 28
Feminist Anti-Pornography as Social Critique 32
Marriage, Gender, and the Family 34
From Social Criticism to Political Philosophy 37
Chapter Summary 39
Case to Consider 39
Notes on Further Reading 40
PART I BASIC ISSUES WITHIN THE LIBERAL PARADIGM 43
3 The Problem of Political Authority 45
The Social Contract Tradition 46
Hobbes’s Social Contract: Mechanism, Egoism, and Rationality 48
Contemporary Hobbesianism 56
Locke: Reason, Morality, and Freedom 60
Contemporary Lockeanism 64
Lessons from Rousseau and Kant 65
From Consent to Legitimacy 69
Chapter Summary 73
vi Contents
Case to Consider 74
Notes on Further Reading 75
4 Distributive Justice 78
Distributive Justice and Equality 80
The Chimerical Allure of an Equal Opportunity Principle 81
Libertarianism 83
The Self-Ownership Argument for Capitalist Property Rights 84
Libertarianism Based on Liberty Alone 87
Utilitarian Approaches to Economic Justice 90
Rawlsian Distributive Justice 92
Varieties of Egalitarianism 97
From Equality to the Welfare State 103
Chapter Summary 105
Case to Consider 107
Notes on Further Reading 108
5 Toleration, Pluralism, and the Foundations of Liberalism 111
The Canons of Liberalism 112
Liberalism and Neutrality 115
The Perfectionist Challenge 119
Utilitarian Liberalism: Perfectionism in Disguise? 123
The Response of Political Liberalism 126
Liberalism, Public Discourse, and Democracy 131
Chapter Summary 133
Case to Consider 135
Notes on Further Reading 135
PART II CRITIQUE OF THE LIBERAL PARADIGM: CHALLENGES
AND DEPARTURES 139
6 Conservatism, Communitarianism, and the Social Conception
of the Self 141
Conservatism 142
Communitarianism 146
The Communitarian Critique of the Liberal Self 146
The Social Self and Value Commitments 150
Liberalism and the Breakdown of Communities 154
Communitarianism as a Positive Alternative to Liberalism 155
Chapter Summary 158
Case to Consider 159
Notes on Further Reading 160
7 Race and the Politics of Identity 163
Ideal Theory and Ongoing Injustice 164
Critical Race Theory 170
What Is Racism, What Is Race? 170
Racism and the Structure of Liberalism 173
Contents vii
Liberalism, Freedom, and Culture 179
Chapter Summary 181
Case to Consider 182
Notes on Further Reading 182
8 Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality 185
Feminism 186
Liberal Feminism and Its Limits 186
Public and Private 189
Justice and Care 191
Departures from Liberalism: Gender, Culture, and Identity Formation 195
Further Departures: The Feminist Critique of Objectivity and Reason 198
Sexuality and Gender Identity 199
Transgender Persons and Fluidity of Identity 201
Identity, Injustice, and Democracy 203
Chapter Summary 205
Case to Consider 206
Notes on Further Reading 206
9 Radical Critique: Marxism and Post-Modernism 209
The Legacy of Marx and Marxism 209
Historical Materialism 210
Ideology 213
Capitalism, Alienation, and Exploitation 216
Marxism and Justice 219
Post-Modern Departures 221
The Fragmented Self 223
Rejecting the Language of Universal Principles 224
Chapter Summary 228
Case to Consider 229
Notes on Further Reading 230
10 Beyond the Nation State: Issues in Transnational Justice 234
Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism 235
Human Rights 237
Global Justice Generally 242
Injustice and Borders: Immigration 247
Chapter Summary 249
Case to Consider 250
Notes on Further Reading 251
Epilogue: The Hope of Liberalism 253
Bibliography 257
Index 279
Preface and Acknowledgments
This book is intended to serve two related purposes. The first is to provide a
text that would be useful in general survey courses on contemporary social and
political philosophy or as a companion text for more focused classes on related
topics. The series in which this book appears is designed to provide mid-level
undergraduate textbooks for students with some background in philosophy but
new to this particular subject matter. With this in mind, this book contains an
admittedly selective account of current trends in (for the most part) Anglo-
American social and political philosophy over the last 30 years or so. The book
is designed to serve as a main text but also could be paired with primary material
from the authors discussed.
The second aim of the book is to provide a general rendering of that material
for an audience outside of academia, though one with some familiarity with
philosophical methods and topics. The general reader should not need any spe-
cialized background in the history of philosophy or political theory to benefit
from this work, though a taste for abstract theorizing may well be a
prerequisite.
The central organizing principle of the book is to lay out in some detail the
guiding paradigm of political philosophy that currently dominates the field—
the “liberalism” inherited from the European enlightenment that undergirds the
constitutional democracies of the modern west—and to discuss particular con-
troversies within that paradigm. It then places that paradigm under scrutiny and
raises deep questions about the methodology, fundamental value commitments,
and philosophical presuppositions of that view. In this way, the book marks what
I take to be a profound shift in political philosophy (and perhaps Anglo-American
philosophy generally) toward asking fundamental questions about its own methods
and bases. Questions about “mainstream" philosophy from various quarters—from
feminists, critical race theorists, post-modern theorists, and others—have caused
many philosophers to rethink the standard techniques of philosophical analysis
that have dominated philosophy (in the Anglophone tradition) since the
seventeenth century. This book reflects the rumblings of that challenge by con-
sidering some of the basic questions raised, for political philosophy at least, from
those perspectives.
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
But this book is still very much an account of what counts as the “mainstream"
of political philosophy. And while chapters are given over to critiques concerning
feminism, race theory, and the like, the bulk of the book is a discussion of theo-
ries that do not mention gender, race, class, ongoing political struggles, or any
of the considerations that these critics want to place at center stage. The reason
for this is that, despite the author’s sympathy with many of these calls for a new
orientation in social philosophy, it would be inaccurate to write an introduction
to the current state of the art in this field without reflecting the actual material
that makes up this current practice. Perhaps another, even more valuable, book
would be entitled “A Revisionist Introduction to Current Political Philosophy”
where such a reorientation is carried out. But the present work has different
aims.
Similarly, the book reflects whatever biases, narrowness, and exclusionary
tendencies are found in current academic philosophy in the English-speaking
world, where “analytic” philosophy is the reigning method. For example, two
broad areas of political thought that are not covered here—again because they
have not been (yet?) fully brought into the parameters of most current work in
the field—are American pragmatism (which some recent analytic philosophers
have claimed inspiration) and the legacy of “Critical Theory” that emerged from
the Frankfurt school in Germany and the United States (except for brief discus-
sions in Chapter 8 and references to the work of Jürgen Habermas). Both these
traditions offer profound insights into questions of political philosophy, and
theorists currently working in this area would do well to include them to a greater
degree in their discussions.
But again, for the general reader who is interested in current trends in political
thought and for the student learning about mainstream social philosophy, the
constellation of topics included here offers, I hope, the best overview of that
landscape. I also hope, however, that the methodological and theoretical chal-
lenges to this mainstream raised here will make the boundaries of that landscape
less secure.
Preface to the Second Edition
The first edition of this book was generally well received, but a recurring criti-
cism of it was that, despite the title of the book, the material in it was really
focused only on political philosophy. Specifically the discussions centered on
the power and authority of the state as a central institution and, moreover, about
domestic policy. What was missing was consideration of social life apart from
formal, legally structured governmental institutions in a single nation state. For
this reason two new chapters have been added. In the first (Chapter 2), “social”
philosophy is discussed, and it is argued there that this area of study is signifi-
cantly different from political philosophy as generally understood. However,
I also suggest there, and repeat periodically throughout the book, that a proper
understanding of political policies and institutions is not only incomplete but