Pragmatic Belief and Political Agency
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717724613 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Author | Jakob Huber |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717724613
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(3) 651 –666
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717724613
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Pragmatic Belief and Political
Agency
Jakob Huber
Abstract
According to a recent methodological critique, much of contemporary political theory has lost
touch with the realities of political life. The aim of this article is to problematise the underlying
antagonism between distant ideals and concrete contexts of agency. Drawing on Kant’s notion
of pragmatic Belief – the idea that in certain situations we can put full confidence in something
we lack sufficient evidence for – I point to the distinctly practical function of political ideals that
these disputes pay scant attention to. Particularly in political contexts, action is itself often framed
by ‘ideal constructions’ that not only motivate and enable us to pursue uncertain goals but also
ultimately feed back onto what is practically possible. The upshot is that especially if we are
interested in a kind of theorising that is less detached from political practice, we should be wary
of disregarding distant ideals as unduly utopian from the outset.
Keywords
Kant, non-ideal theory, realism, pragmatic Belief
Accepted: 14 July 2017
According to a recent methodological critique, much of contemporary political theory has
lost touch with the realities of political life. Rather than searching for utopian ideals of
how we ought to life together,1 the argument goes, we should formulate normative prin-
ciples that factor in the various constraints under which political agents actually operate.
The aim of this article is to problematise an antagonism underlying this critique and (to
some extent) the ensuing debate as a whole: that between distant ideals and concrete con-
texts of agency. Drawing on Kant’s notion of pragmatic Belief,2 I point to the distinctly
practical function of political ideals that the pertinent disputes pay scant attention to. I
argue that action in political contexts is itself often framed by ‘ideal constructions’ that
not only motivate and enable us to pursue uncertain goals but also ultimately feed back
onto what is practically possible. The upshot is that particularly if we are interested in a
Department of Government, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Jakob Huber, Department of Government, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton
Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: j.huber@lse.ac.uk
724613PSX0010.1177/0032321717724613Political StudiesHuber
research-article2017
Article
652 Political Studies 66(3)
kind of theorising that is less detached from political practice, we should be wary of dis-
regarding distant ideals as unduly utopian from the outset.
The argument unfolds in three steps. I start by sketching the anti-utopian critique,
according to which political theorists should be more sensitive to factual considerations
about what we can realistically expect to achieve. The second section introduces Kant’s
conception of pragmatic Belief, that is, a firm epistemic attitude we are warranted to
adopt without sufficient evidence but because of some end we have set for ourselves. The
thought is that in certain situations, where we lack the required evidence whether some-
thing is possible or not but have to act one way or another, we can choose firmly to accept
a proposition on practical grounds. The implication is that subjective aspirations and
objective feasibility are often reciprocally related, as the ideals that agents bring to bear
in action co-determine the limits of what is practically possible. As I go on to argue in the
third section, this insight is particularly pertinent to political life, where concrete efforts
that elicit real-world change are often based on commitment to distant ends.
The Limits of Practical Possibility
The last decade or so saw an enormous surge in methodological debates on the nature and
status of political philosophy. A host of authors provoked renewed attention to the ques-
tion what it is that we are doing when we theorise about politics and how we should go
about doing it. While their underlying concerns are often very distinct, many of them
share a basic dissatisfaction with much of contemporary political philosophy in a broadly
post-Rawlsian vein, which they regard as too idealistic, moralistic or abstract and thus
ultimately unable or unwilling to provide solutions to urgent problems facing us here and
now.
Here, I want to focus on one particular, anti-utopian critique of the existing methodo-
logical paradigm. Proponents of this critique question how ambitious the ideals should be
that political theorists advocate and how much, in formulating them, they should be con-
strained by the limits of practical possibility. Rather than constructing a ‘realistic utopia’
in which justice is fully realised ‘someday, somewhere’ (Rawls, 2001: 127), the argument
goes, we should pay closer attention to the inherent (e.g. motivational and institutional)
limitations under which the agents that are supposed to enact these ideal visions operate.
Political ideals that are too distant and ambitious are unable to orient people’s actions
properly as they stipulate a certain vision of what is desirable or valuable without suffi-
cient reference to the facts ‘on the ground’. Instead, we should closely study the (narrow)
constraints within which political life and practice unfold and consequently show more
caution in advocating possible worlds that go beyond them.
The anti-utopian critique comes in a number of shapes and disguises. Let me distin-
guish two versions of the basic accusation that political theory is too detached from the
real world of politics: the non-ideal and the realist critiques. Note that I have no intention
to reduce them to one another. Realists, in particular, have been adamant that they see
themselves as a fundamental alternative rather than an internal corrective to the post-
Rawlsian paradigm (e.g. Rossi and Sleat, 2014; Sleat, 2016). I do believe, however, that
it is possible to tease out an underlying anti-utopian theme that the two sets of critiques
share.
The non-ideal critique starts from the assumption that much theory in a Rawlsian vein
is too abstract and idealised as to be able to provide normative guidance for political
action and reform under real-world circumstances.3 In attempting to bracket salient facts
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