Language and legitimacy: Is pragmatist political theory fallacious?
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| Author | Thomas Fossen |
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885117699977 |
| Subject Matter | Commentary |
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(2) 293–305
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885117699977
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Commentary
Language and legitimacy:
Is pragmatist political
theory fallacious?
Thomas Fossen
Leiden University, The Netherlands
Abstract
Eva Erman and Niklas Mo
¨ller have recently criticised a range of political theorists for
committing a pragmatistic fallacy, illicitly drawing normative conclusions from politically
neutral ideas about language. This paper examines their critique with respect to one of
their primary targets: the pragmatist approach to political legitimacy that I proposed in
earlier work, which draws on Robert Brandom’s theory of language. I argue that the
charge relies on a misrepresentation of the role of pragmatist ideas about language in
my analysis of legitimacy. Pragmatism’s significance for thinking about political legitimacy
does not lie in the normative conclusions it justifies but in the way it reorients our
thinking towards political practice. This raises the deeper question of what we are to
expect from a theory of legitimacy. I argue that Erman and Mo
¨ller presuppose a widely
held but unduly restrictive conception of what a normative theory of legitimacy consists
in and that pragmatism can broaden the scope of enquiry: a theory of legitimacy should
not focus narrowly on the content and justification of criteria, but more fundamentally
aim to explicate the forms of political activity in which such criteria are at stake.
Keywords
Methodology in political theory, normative political theory, philosophy of language,
political legitimacy, pragmatism, Robert Brandom
Introduction
What is the significance of pragmatist philosophy of language for political theory?
Pragmatists such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and, more recently, Robert Brandom
hold that meaning ought to be understood in terms of use. Political theorists
who find mainstream approaches overly abstract have used pragmatist ideas, like
Wittgenstein’s notion of language games, as a resource for more practice-oriented
theorising. However, Eva Erman and Niklas Mo
¨ller have recently argued, in this
Corresponding author:
Thomas Fossen, Leiden University, Reuvensplaats 4, Leiden 2311 BE, The Netherlands.
Email: t.fossen@phil.leidenuniv.nl
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