Morality, politics, and contingency

Abstract

The influential realist thesis that politics and morals are distinct and mutually exclusive spheres of interest is one that has been challenged within the tradition of analytic moral and political theory. Over the last 50 years, several notable liberal analytic philosophers, including Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, and Thomas Nagel, have argued that not only is politics not separate from and inimical to ethics but that there exists such a thing as political morality. This article contends that while the notion of political morality may make more sense of what is regarded as a central and troubling problem of politics, it also forces us to confront the more fundamental challenge of the radical contingency of our moral and political predicament. Whether analytic political theory is capable of producing a convincing response to the latter challenge remains precariously unclear.