What not to expect from the pragmatic turn in political theory
| Author | Niklas Möller,Eva Erman |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885114537635 |
| Published date | 01 April 2015 |
| Date | 01 April 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
E J P T
European Journal of Political Theory
2015, Vol. 14(2) 121–140
! The Author(s) 2014
What not to expect
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
from the pragmatic turn
DOI: 10.1177/1474885114537635
ept.sagepub.com
in political theory
Eva Erman
Uppsala University, Sweden
Niklas Mo
¨ ller
Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Abstract
The central ideas coming out of the so-called pragmatic turn in philosophy have set in
motion what may be described as a pragmatic turn in normative political theory. It has
become commonplace among political theorists to draw on theories of language and
meaning in theorising democracy, pluralism, justice, etc. The aim of this paper is to
explore attempts by political theorists to use theories of language and meaning for such
normative purposes. Focusing on Wittgenstein’s account, it is argued that these
attempts are unsuccessful. It is shown that pragmatically influenced political theorists
draw faulty epistemological, ontological and semantic conclusions from Wittgenstein’s
view in their normative theorising, and it is argued that pragmatically influenced theories
of language and meaning, however full of insight, cannot be put to substantial normative
use in political theory. The general scope of the thesis is motivated by pointing to the
general form of the argument and by moving beyond Wittgenstein to other philoso-
phers of mind and language, illustrating how similar overextensions are made with
regard to Robert Brandom’s theory of language and meaning.
Keywords
Pragmatic turn, Wittgenstein, normative political theory, Aletta Norval, James Tully,
philosophy of language and meaning
Introduction
The pragmatic turn in philosophy usually refers to attempts made by philosophers
like John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, Wilfrid Sellars, Richard
Rorty and Robert Brandom to ‘pragmaticise’ analytic philosophy of language by
Corresponding author:
Eva Erman, Uppsala University, Valvgatan 4, Uppsala 751 20, Sweden.
Email: eva.erman@statsvet.uu.se
122
European Journal of Political Theory 14(2)
moving away from a traditional representationalist view towards a view that gives
primacy to human practices, encouraging a way of philosophising more apt to
dealing with problems of everyday life.1 The central ideas coming out of this
turn have had a major impact on several debates in philosophy over the last dec-
ades, ranging from metaphysics to epistemology. Most recently, they have set in
motion what may be described as a pragmatic turn in normative political theory. It
has become commonplace among political theorists today to draw on pragmatic-
ally influenced theories of language and meaning in their theorising of democracy,
pluralism, justice, freedom, political legitimacy and so on. That this is not a mar-
ginal phenomenon but occurs on a wide front makes it even more interesting.
On the one hand, it is not hard to see the appeal of drawing inspiration from
philosophers like Wittgenstein, who has rocked established philosophical presump-
tions at the roots. On the other, it remains unclear from these accounts what work,
more exactly, such an approach of language and meaning could do for normative
theory.
The aim of this paper is to explore the ‘gap’ between pragmatically influenced
theories of language and meaning and normative political theory, and how nor-
mative political theorists have attempted to bridge it by making use of the former
theories for normative purposes. What motivates this exploration is not only a
suspicion that theorists using theories of language and meaning in this way put
too much faith in what they can do with them but also that no systematic attempt
has been made so far to unfold where such pragmatically influenced normative
projects go wrong. By revealing the mistakes underlying the attempts to bridge the
gap between theories of meaning and normative political theories, we aim to make
plausible the general thesis that pragmatically influenced theories of language and
meaning, however full of insight, cannot be put to substantial normative use in
political theory.2
The argument is developed in five steps. First, we illustrate how Wittgenstein’s
view is used among prominent political theorists in their respective normative
theory. This is done to give an idea of how widespread this phenomenon is in
political theory (section 1). In sections 2–4, our thesis is defended in a threefold
manner. Section 2 focuses on the nature of language, analysing how central onto-
logical aspects of Wittgenstein’s view are utilised in these normative political the-
ories. Section 3 focuses on contextualism and perception, studying how political
theorists make use of central epistemological aspects of Wittgenstein’s account. In
section 4, focus is directed at understanding, and we analyse how central semantic
aspects of this account are used in normative theory. We demonstrate that faulty
conclusions are drawn from Wittgenstein’s view in all three cases. Against what is
claimed by these political theorists, it is argued that Wittgenstein’s account of
language and meaning can be used neither to dismiss some specific normative
theories, nor to show the superiority of other specific theories. In a final step, we
discuss the scope of our thesis, motivating what may seem like a bold conjecture in
light of the fact that the argument is based on how one view of language and
meaning is used in normative theory. This is done by pointing to the general
form of the argument and by moving beyond Wittgenstein to other philosophers
Erman and Mo¨ller
123
of mind and language, illustrating how similar overextensions are made with regard
to Robert Brandom’s theory of language and meaning (section 5).
1. The pragmatic turn in normative political theory
There are indeed many theorists in contemporary philosophy who adopt ideas
emerging from the pragmatic turn and thus may be described as pragmatists, as
well as many kinds of projects that could be considered part of a pragmatic turn.
Take, for example, the current debate in political theory in which attempts are
made to provide an epistemic justification of democracy drawing on the classical
American pragmatists.3 However, the specific pragmatic turn we look at in this
paper is concerned with the philosophy of language rather than with epistemic
justification. The common denominator of theorists we categorise as representa-
tives of this pragmatic turn, let us call them ‘p-theorists’ for short, is that they are
normative political theorists in the contemporary debate who put pragmatically
influenced theories of language and meaning into normative use, both in defending
certain positions and in criticising others. Thus, when we talk about ‘the pragmatic
turn’, we refer to nothing more or less than this. Apart from this unifying feature,
p-theorists may represent a wide range of approaches. For example, while some
p-theorists would describe themselves as pragmatists also in other respects, others
would be better described as poststructuralists or deconstructivists. Moreover,
whether the philosophers of language and meaning with a pragmatist outlook
that are utilised by p-theorists also call themselves ‘pragmatists’ is not our concern.
Among philosophers adopting such a pragmatist outlook, Wittgenstein is by far
the most influential in contemporary political theory. In this section, we briefly
present several prominent p-theorists extracting normative ammunition from
Wittgenstein’s view of language and meaning.4 In doing so, we cannot do justice
to the richness of each theory, nor fully appreciate the diversity among them. Still,
as will be evident below, what makes an analysis of these p-theorists interesting is
not only that they are distinguished scholars in normative political theory but also
that they to a large degree make use of the same Wittgensteinian ideas for a range
of different normative purposes, spanning from agonistic and aversive theories of
democracy to notions of freedom and democratic self-determination.
In Chantal Mouffe’s view, liberal democratic theory is ill-equipped to address
the challenges that democratic societies face today. In the last decade, she has not
only persistently called for an alternative way of theorising about the political but
also responded to this call in the form of the agonistic model of democracy. From
the very outset, Mouffe has argued that Wittgenstein is particularly helpful in this
endeavor. In Mouffe’s view, we can ‘use Wittgenstein’s insights to undermine
Habermas’s conception of procedure’ as well as challenge his idea of dialogue.5
In fact, she even claims that Wittgenstein’s view is ‘undermining the very basis’ of
the ‘universalist-rationalist’ form of reasoning that underpins the liberal demo-
cratic approach as a whole, defended not only by Habermas but also by
Dworkin and the early Rawls.6 Instead, Wittgenstein points to ‘a new way of
theorising about the political, one that that breaks with the universalising and
124
European Journal of Political Theory 14(2)
homogenising mode that has informed most of liberal theory’ as well as ‘renounce
its [liberal] claims to universality’.7
The normative source of this criticism is to be found in Wittgenstein’s specific
form of contextualism, according to Mouffe. In order to have an agreement or
reach consensus, Mouffe argues, we must first have an agreement on the language
used, which in turn implies agreement on what Wittgenstein famously calls a ‘form
of life’.8 In contrast to what liberal theorists...
To continue reading
Request your trial