Political Philosophy’s Methodological Moment and the Rise of Public Political Philosophy

Abstract

Political philosophy is having a methodological moment. Driven by long-standing frustrations at the fragmentation of our field, as well as recent urges to become more engaged with the ‘real’ world, there is now a boom in debates concerning the ‘true’ nature of our vocation. Yet how can this new work avoid simply recycling old rivalries under new labels? The key is to turn all this so-called methodological interest into a genuinely new programme of ‘methodology’, defined here as the careful identification and evaluation of all the different methods of reasoning available to us as political philosophers. This programme would clarify, for the first time, all the many ways in which we might argue with one another, thus making us less likely to talk past each another, and more likely to work fruitfully together.

Normative Behaviourism: A Reply

“…What if civic education could alter either challenge? (Floyd, 2022(Floyd, , 2023b All these notions and more need careful testing. Hunting new virtues without old vices.…”

“…Don’t explain your philosophy, embody it, said the stoics, knowing that actions and institutions are the only manifestations of our commitments that really count. Radicals, sure, but also realists (Floyd, 2022), and thus bearers of a spirit I have tried to ‘embody’ myself in recent years when connecting normative behaviourism to international politics (Floyd, 2016b), continental philosophy (Floyd, 2016b) and even ideal theory (Floyd, 2020), knowing there are always new combinations and conundrums to explore. What if, for example, our wonderful natural preferences ruin our wonderful natural environment?…”

“…We might even need to change, at least sometimes, the way that we talk, by no longer 'restricting' ourselves purely to complicated arguments in books and seminars, and instead trying a more 'public' form of political philosophy in which we experiment with, for example, fiction and humour, much as we once tried dialogues and meditations, seeking 'engagement' and even 'impact' in turn (Floyd, 2019(Floyd, , 2022. This would mean spreading ideas and opening minds, pushing imagination and curiosity, but also feeding a broader experimental culture, including as regards the core variables of normative behaviourism, just so long as we remember that the acid test of it all remains how people find such things once they have had to live with them.…”

“…13 Saying, in other words, that it couldn’t have saved us in the Middle Ages, is not the same thing as saying it can’t help us now. That qualification, however, matters less than a second point, which is that normative behaviourism, by treating the past as a series of ‘experiments’ on principles 14 (Miller, 2023: 4), is perfectly open to further experimentation in the future, and especially so if such experimentation has itself proven useful (Floyd, 2017a, 2020, 2022).…”

How Much Data for the Political Theorist? On the Argumentative Normative Behaviourism

“…Floyd’s approach focuses on empirical data and the outcome of political science research, as a part of what perhaps can be called the new empirical political theory school of thought (Floyd, 2022; Perez, 2022).…”