This paper attempts to get some critical distance on the increasingly fashionable issue of realism in political theory. Realism has an ambiguous status: it is sometimes presented as a radical challenge to the status quo; but it also often appears as a conservative force, aimed at clipping the wings of more 'idealistic' political theorists. I suggest that what we might call 'actually existing realism' is indeed a conservative presence in political philosophy, and that its ambiguous status plays a part in making it so. But I also argue that there is no necessary connection between realism and conservatism. This paper describes the three contingent and suspiciously quick steps which lead from an initial commitment to being attentive to the real world, via a particular kind of pessimism about political possibilities, to an unnecessarily conservative destination. In the process, I try to show how the ubiquitous trinity of realism, pessimism and conservatism might be pulled apart, thus removing the artificial tension between 'being realistic' and the demand for far-reaching social change.

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In the last few years, the situation and experiences of women in academic philosophy-and in academia more broadly-have received unprecedented attention. For feminist philosophers, a growing awareness of the problems facing women in the discipline is something to be welcomed. Nevertheless, this paper raises some serious concerns about the framework within which these problems are analysed and addressed. I suggest that the currently prevalent approach overemphasises issues of representation, and that it has also become preoccupied with psychology at the expense of political and social criticism. no feminist would want to line up with the defenders of a sexist establishment by attacking long-overdue efforts to combat some very real problems. This paper is my response to the dilemma. It is intended as a critique of present theoretical and practical approaches to the issue of women in philosophy. The critique is partly, though not purely, a feminist one. As Black feminists, among others, have long pointed out (Crenshaw 1991; Collins 2000; cf. Spelman 1988), there is in any case no such thing as a 'purely feminist' position, simply because women exist in societies that are structured by relations of racial and class domination as well as by gender. Women in philosophy, too, live and work in institutions which are shaped and structured by these and other forces. To a large extent, the criticisms I'll make of the current discussion around the issue of women in philosophy may be understood as criticisms of the attempt to treat that issue as an isolated 'woman problem', to be analysed and resolved independently of a broader critique of academic institutions and of the forces that shape them. It is worth confessing now to some qualms about the very decision to write about the issue of 'women in philosophy'. It might be simpler if I could share the view that some philosophers hold of their discipline, whereby it is a rare bastion of incisive and critical thinking, providing a valuable (if underappreciated) service to society; but I cannot honestly share that view. 1 In writing about the situation of women in philosophy, I do not mean to imply otherwise: that is, I do not approach this subject with the guiding idea that academic philosophy is a wonderful thing, so that to deny women equal access to or enjoyment of it is to deny them something precious. 2 Nor do I mean to endow the issue of 'women in philosophy' with any special strategic or global importance: wonderful or not, the field of philosophy is-in the grand scheme of things-quite tiny. I write about it-rather than writing about women in sport, for example-as a matter of personal and local interest, as a woman whose field of study and work is philosophy. Feminists outside the field-and even within it-may feel that they have better things to think about than the plight of women in philosophy (or of women in academia, for that matter). That is fair enough. 1 I don't pretend to be able to vindicate this negative verdict on my own field here, though I have defended it at ...

Recent political developments have made the notion of 'post-truth' ubiquitous.  Along with associated terms such as 'fake news' and 'alternative facts', it appears with regularity in coverage of and commentary on Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, and the role – relative to these phenomena – of a half-despised, half-feared creature known as 'the public'.  It has become commonplace to assert that we now inhabit, or are entering, a post-truth world.   In this paper, I issue a sceptical challenge against the distinctiveness and utility of the notion of post-truth. I argue, first, that the term fails to capture anything that is both real and novel. Moreover, post-truth discourse often has a not-fully-explicit political force and function: to ‘irrationalise’ political disaffection and to signal loyalty to a ‘pre-post-truth’ political status quo. The central insight of the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and others – that saying is always also doing – is as indispensable for understanding the significance of much of what is labelled ‘post-truth’, I’ll argue, as it is for understanding the significance of that very act of labelling. Keywords: post-truth, speech acts, Trump, brexit, Austin