5. Oxford Readings and Laslett and Runciman Third to Fifth Series
The third series of Philosophy, Politics and Society, again edited by Laslett and Runciman, appeared in 1967 (Laslett and Runciman, 1967), the same year that Quinton produced the edited collectionPolitical Philosophy
for the Oxford Readings in Philosophy series. Quinton included Hart’s ‘Natural Rights’ paper as well as Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. Other highlights include a symposium between R.S. Peters and Peter Winch on ‘Authority’, and two papers by Brian Barry, ‘The Public Interest’ and ‘Justice and the Common Good’. Barry’sPolitical Argument
, a major work of analytic political philosophy, had recently also been published (Barry, 1965). Indeed in the first paragraph ofPolitical Argument
Barry explicit describes his approach as ‘analytical’, which, interestingly, he contrasts with ‘causal’, by which he appears to mean the collection of data or historical information for purposes of scientific explanation (Barry, 1965, p. xvii). Clearly Barry’s intention is to use a method of analysis, involving arguments, objections to the arguments of others, and distinctions, rather than supporting or undermining theories through the accumulation of evidence.
Two more methodological papers are included by Quinton, John Plamenatz’s ‘The Use of Political Theory’ and P.H. Partridge’s ‘Politics, Philosophy, Ideology’. These both respond to the allegation that political philosophy is dead. Plamenatz appears to agree with his contemporaries that most of great philosophers of the past were hopelessly confused; nevertheless, he claims, political philosophy is a branch of practical philosophy, needed to guide conduct, despite the claims of the positivists (Plamenatz 1960/1967). Partridge suggests that one reason for the apparent decline of morally informed political philosophy is the triumph of democracy, and the development of a broad political consensus. Nevertheless, he argues, political theory of other sorts flourishes (Partridge 1961/1967).
For present purposes, however, Quinton’s introduction to the volume is of greatest interest. He begins by enquiring after the nature of the subject of political philosophy, suggesting that the ‘most uncontroversial way of defining political philosophy is as the common topic of a series of famous books’ (Quinton, 1967, p. 1). But Quinton then suggests that ‘a comparative definite place has now been marked out for philosophy within the total range of man’s intellectual activities’. This place is ‘the task of classifying and analysing the terms, statements and arguments of the substantive, first-order disciplines’ (Quinton, 1967, p. 1). From this, Quinton concludes, remarkably, that ‘the works that make up the great tradition of political philosophy are … only to a small, though commonly crucial, extent works of philosophy in the strict sense’ (Quinton, 1967, p. 1) For, as Quinton remarks, they also contain factual or descriptive elements falling under the heading of ‘political science’ and recommendations of ideal ends, which he calls ‘ideology’.
Returning toPhilosophy, Politics and Society
series three, the editors report a subject in a productive phase, with a good number of books and important articles appearing in recent years. As with previous volumes the contributions range over a variety of subjects, but there is a greater awareness that positivism is a theory that needs to be engaged with critically, rather than a formula or straightjacket. Interestingly, the collection begins with a paper by Ayer, ‘Man As A Subject for Science’, which asks why the social sciences have failed to achieve the apparent success in the natural sciences. Ayer’s conclusion is relatively modest: the fact that human action has a social meaning does not rule out the type of determinism that would allow scientific explanation of human behaviour (Ayer, 1967). However, a more critical engagement with positivism appears in the following essay, Charles Taylor’s ‘Neutrality in Political Science’, which attempts to undermine the fact-value distinction by arguing that certain combinations of descriptions and value judgments cannot coherently be combined, and thus it is mistaken to suppose that questions of facts and values are entirely separable (Taylor, 1967). This is complemented by the interesting inclusion of Hannah Arendt’s ‘Truth and Politics’. Without making the point exactly in these terms, Arendt provides an important counterweight to the naivety of a positivistic approach to politics that supposes that scientific enquiry will be sufficient to settle empirical conflict. In contrast, Arendt shows with some plausibility how impotent a dispassionate search for empirical truth can be in the face of political power that has an interest in an opposing view (Arendt, 1967).
The collection also includes contributions from Arrow, summarising his impossibility theorem, C.B. MacPherson, R.M. Hare, Stephen Lukes, John Plamenatz and Bernard Crick. But once more the highlight of the volume is Rawls’s paper, this time ‘Distributive Justice’, in which he argues that a competitive market, if appropriately regulated, can be made to satisfy his two principles of justice (Rawls, 1967). Much of this paper, if not the main thrust of the argument, re-appears later inA Theory of Justice
.
For the fourth series, published in 1972, Laslett and Runciman are joined as editor by Quentin Skinner (Laslett, Runciman and Skinner, 1972). It is, presumably, no coincidence that the Cambridge school of the history of political thought is well-represented here with papers by Skinner, John Dunn and Richard Tuck (then aged 23). The preface comments that the recovery of political philosophy was partly a matter of rebutting the ‘end-of-ideology’ theorists who proclaimed ideology to be over, on the basis of ‘a high degree of governmental stability [in Western democracies together] with a high degree of popular apathy’ (Laslett, Runciman and Skinner, 1972, p. 1). It is curious, however, that the end of ideology theorists, by which the editors presumably mean Daniel Bell and followers, were neither represented nor discussed in any detail in the earlier volumes, although they were discussed by Partridge in the Quinton collection. Another previous bogey - crude positivism, as so often problematically attributed to Weldon among others - is said to have been overcome by the realisation by Taylor, Foot, Hampshire and others that identification of ‘the facts’ often involves a description which is ‘normatively weighted’ (Laslett, Runciman and Skinner, 1972, p. 3). The overwhelming impression given in the Introduction is relief at the defeat of the smothering forces of the ‘end-of-ideology’ and positivism, and the resurrection of political philosophy, which now takes on a variety of forms. Yet it is worth noting that the preface makes no mention of Rawls. Presumably the volume went to press before the publication ofA Theory of Justice
(Rawls, 1971), published in 1972 in the UK, and so at this point nothing usefully could be said. Once more the collection reprints some highly notable papers, such as Hanna Pitkin’s ‘Obligation and Consent’ (first published 1965 and 1966), Robert Nozick’s ‘Coercion’ (first published 1969) and Gerald MacCallum’s ‘Negative and Positive Freedom (first published 1967), with other contributions from Alasdair MacIntyre, James Cornford, Alan Ryan and James Coleman.
Before moving on it is worth adding a very brief word about Skinner’s paper “‘Social Meaning’ and the Explanation of Social Action”, for this is part of a programme of work by Skinner that may well be among the most ambitious attempts to connect political philosophy with other work in contemporary philosophy. Drawing on the work of Austin, Strawson, Grice and Davidson, alongside Winch and Hollis, Skinner attempts to apply Austin’s notion of ‘illocutionary force’ in analysing the social meaning of action (Skinner, 1972).
For the fifth series, published in 1979, co-edited this time by James Fishkin alongside Laslett, political philosophy has clearly entered its Rawlsian phase (Laslett and Fishkin, 1979). The preface begins by suggesting that the existence ofA Theory of Justice
at last falsifies Berlin’s earlier contention that no commanding work of political philosophy of the twentieth century exists (Laslett and Fishkin 1979, p. 1). The editors also note the importance of the publication of Nozick’sAnarchy State and Utopia
(Nozick, 1974), and the foundation of the journal, in 1971,Philosophy and Public Affairs
. The editors comment that they have a ‘twinge of regret’ that so little of the work that has led to the revival of the subject was conducted in the UK. Indeed, of the work they present only two papers were produced by authors based in the UK, Laslett himself and the relatively unknown Geoffrey Harrison of the University of Reading, whose paper ‘Relativism and Toleration’, first published inEthics
in 1976, is really a work of moral philosophy. Brian Barry, who has a paper in the volume, was then based in Chicago. On the other hand, they say, they are delighted that the field is now flourishing. As noted earlier, however, it is unclear that political philosophy in the United States ever went through the paralysing methodological anxieties suffered in the UK. It may well be that the dominance of linguistic philosophy in Oxford exerted an effect on political philosophy in a way that was not experienced elsewhere. To take one example, the Oxford obsession with the question of whether a claim in philosophy is analytic or synthetic may have forced discussion into unpromising cul-de-sacs, whereas elsewhere in the world, especially at Harvard under the influence of Quine, the straightjacket was applied with a lower degree of pressure, and political philosophers felt freer to advance their case by whatever means were at hand (for related reflections see Cohen, 2000, pp. 17-19).
The fifth series was published at what may well be close to the high point of political philosophy in the twentieth century. The previous few years had seen, as we have noted, the publication of Rawls’s and Nozick’s major works, and within two years (1981) Dworkin’s two papers ‘What is Equality? Part 1 and Part 2’ would also appear (Dworkin, 1981a, Dworkin 1981d). The years 1971-1981 are rarely celebrated, but they are the years in which the contemporary canon in political philosophy was created.
Laslett and Fishkin speculate that three causes, in addition to Rawls’s towering work, brought political philosophy to its new vibrant state. The first is the growth of human populations and its effect on the environment. The second they cryptically call ‘arithmetic humanity in relation to politics’ by which they mean what would now be called global ethics and problems concerning our duties to future generations. Finally, they list concerns over the obligations owed by the ‘subjects of contemporary authoritarian states’, especially in relation to the Soviet Union (Laslett and Fishkin, 1979, p. 2). The second of the themes is well-represented by the reprint of Peter Singer’s famous 1971 paper ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’ and also Laslett’s ‘The Conversation Between the Generations’, although the first theme (environmental concerns) is not to be found in the volume, and the third (authoritarianism) only partially. It is true that several papers discuss democracy and the limits of authority, yet only Fishkin’s own contribution ‘Tyranny and Democratic Theory’ expressly takes non-liberal societies as its object. Perhaps for this reason it is worth comparing Laslett and Runciman’s account of the revival of political philosophy with one which is now more familiar. This is the claim that the US civil rights movement and American involvement in the Vietnam war created a series of urgent problems concerning the goals and limits of state power, sparking a variety of critical responses including defences of anarchism (Wolff, 1970/72), detailed reflection on the nature of a just war (Walzer, 1977) and extensive discussions of civil disobedience and freedom of expression. On this view, these urgent problems not only drew in the finest philosophical minds to the debate but also rendered any last vestiges of positivistic subjectivism an irrelevance.
Returing to Laslett and Fishkin’s introduction, they also raise the question of whether the series has now served its purpose and ask whether there will be any point in the future in producing such a general work collecting together papers in political philosophy. In fact the series still continues, but changed in form so as to be focused on a single topic. The next volume, also edited by Laslett and Fishkin, appeared in 1992 and, for the first time, had a substantive title:Justice Between Age Groups and Generations
(Laslett and Fishkin, 1992). This was followed byDebating Deliberative Democracy
, in 2003 (Laslett and Fishkin, 2003). Laslett, sadly, died in 2001, but the series continues, withPopulation and Political Theory
, edited by Fishkin and Robert Goodin published in 2010 (Fishkin and Goodin, 2010).
Comparing the later volumes with the earlier parts of the series, the most obvious point is that the subject had developed to a point where a short volume devoted to political philosophy generally had little purpose. To some degree the same development occurred with the Oxford Readings series, wherePolitical Philosophy
, edited by Quinton, published in 1967, can be compared to Jeremy Waldron’s edited collection
Theories of Rights
(Waldron, 1985). The second change is the shift from what the editors of the second series aptly called diagnosis to advocacy: arguments for substantive views, which re-emerged with Rawls and gave others the courage to continue. This, I think, is a matter more of overcoming some of the dogmas of positivism and linguistic philosophy rather than applying other aspects of analytic philosophy. The third development concerns the engagement of the papers with the social sciences. The editors throughout the series made various valiant attempts to connect political philosophy with allied subjects such as history and sociology. Over the decades it may be possible to detect the rising importance to political philosophy of economics, rational choice theory and formal models, and possibly the diminishing importance of qualitative social science, especially sociology. To some degree this may be part of the remaining legacy of positivism for political philosophy: the refusal to countenance empirical theory unless it yields determinate predictions that can be tested by observational or statistical methods. However, a powerful counter-current also exists in the work of writers such as Michael Walzer, Bernard Williams and Charles Taylor who act on a much more inclusive view of what counts as successful and useful social science (see, for example, Walzer 1983, Williams 2005, Taylor 1990).