Difference and the Concept of the Political in Contemporary Political Philosophy
| Author | Noël O'Sullivan |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00109 |
| Published date | 01 September 1997 |
| Date | 01 September 1997 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Dierence and the Concept of the Political in
Contemporary Political Philosophy
NOE
ÈLO'SULLIVAN1
University of Hull
A striking feature of contemporary political philosophy is the emergence of the
nature of the political itself as a central theme of discussion. There are various
reasons for this development, but all of them merely reinforce the problem posed in
its most stark form by postmodern theory. This is the problem of determining what
concept of the political, if any, can accommodate the extreme diversity that is the
main feature of contemporary western life. That is the question with which the
present paper is concerned.
The three currently in¯uential concepts of the political are analysed, after which it
is suggested that a fourth concept, which is a revisedand reformulated version of the
classical idea of civil association, provides the basis for a concept of the political best
suited to modern conditions of increasing diversity.
A striking feature of contemporary political philosophy is the emergence of the
nature of the political itself as a central theme of discussion.2The reasons for
this development are not hard to identify. One is postmodern theory, which
tends to view any concept of the political as merely a mask for power, privilege
and special interests. It accordingly presents a major challenge to orthodox
liberal ideas about the political, and in particular to the liberal tendency to
identify the political as a neutral arena, to which con¯icting interests may turn
for impartial arbitration. A second reason why the nature of the political has
been moved to the top of the intellectual agenda is provided by radical
feminism. Like postmodern theory, radical feminism maintains that the storyof
western life to date is one of arbitrary exclusions, in the course of which various
victim groups have been created, especially ± in the case of women ± by
patriarchy.3A third reason is the development of multicultural theory.
What is mainly relevant at present, however, is the fact that all these
considerations have in every case merely reinforced the problem posed in its
#Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
1I am indebted to conversations with Bhikhu Parekh, Matthew Festenstein, Thomas Pantham,
Costas Constantinou and Henrik Sondergaard on many aspects of this paper. The ®nal positions
advanced are of course my own.
2See, for example, A. Heller, `On the Concept of the Political Revisited', in D. Held (ed.),
Political Theory Today (Oxford, Polity, 1991), pp. 330±44; J. Butler and J. Scott (eds), Feminists
Theorize the Political (New York, Routledge, 1992); C. Moue, The Return of the Political
(London, Verso, 1993); E. Frazer and N. Lacey, `Politics and the public in Rawls' political
liberalism', Political Studies, XLIII (1995), 233±47; B. Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement
of Politics (New York, Cornell University Press, 1993). Thereis, in addition, the extensive body of
literature now devoted to Carl Schmitt's work on the concept of the political. On Schmitt, see for
example P. Gottfried, Carl Schmitt (London, Claridge, 1990).
3See, for example, Butler and Scott, Feminists Theorize the Political.
Political Studies (1997), XLV, 739±754
most stark form by postmodern theory. This is the problem of determining what
concept of the political, if any, can accommodate the extreme diversity that is
the main feature of contemporary western life. That is the question with which
the present paper is concerned.
How then are we to form an appropriate concept of the political? The ®rst
step is to see what guidance can be got from the theories currently available.
There are three of these. One is the liberal theory of the political, which is in
terms of an order of rights founded upon a rational ideal of justice. This is best
represented by the work of Rawls. The second may be termed the discourse
theory of the political and is best represented by Habermas. The third may be
described as the agonal theory of the political, which will be represented here by
the work of Bonnie Honig and William Connolly.
After examining these three concepts of the political, attention will be
directed to a fourth that has been relatively neglected in postwar decades,
although it has recently been the subject of renewed interest amongst both
radical and conservative political thinkers. This is the classical ideal of civil
association. What will be suggested is that it is upon the basis of the civil ideal
that a concept of the political best suited to modern conditions of increasing
diversity may be constructed. It will also be stressed, however, that before the
civil ideal can be used for this purpose it requires extensive reformulation. The
lines on which this reformulation must proceed will be brie¯y outlined.
The Liberal Concept of the Political
The central concept of the liberal theory of the political is the idea of rights. As
is generally recognized, the main defect of this approach is its instrumentalism.
In liberalism, that is to say, the political is destroyed by being `privatized', so to
speak, through being subordinated to individual rights or, in some versions, to
interests.
Against this background, the publication of Rawls' work on justice in the
early 1970s seemed to mark a new departure, since Rawls took as his starting-
point a rejection of utilitarian modes of thought and was committed, in
particular, to maintaining the primacy of the (non-instrumental) right over all
conceptions of the good. Not surprisingly, an immediate result of Rawls' work
was to provoke widespread talk of the rebirth of genuinely political philosophy
in the liberal tradition. In The Return of the Political, however, Chantal Moue
has rightly dismissed this as a gross misunderstanding of what has really
happened to liberalism in recent decades. What has been celebrated as a rebirth
of political philosophy, she observes:
is in fact a mere extension of moral philosophy; it is moral reasoning
applied to the treatment of political institutions. This is manifest in the
absence in current liberal theorizing of a proper distinction between moral
discourse and political discourse.4
Seen from this sceptical point of view, the real importance of Rawls' theory
work is that it provides the classic illustration of the post-war eclipse of the
political by the moral in liberal theorizing. Three considerations in particular
account for Rawls' inability to distinguish the moral from the political. The ®rst
4Moue, The Return of the Political, p. 147.
740 The Concept of the Political in Contemporary Philosophy
#Political Studies Association, 1997
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