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RESEARCH

I’m interested in why we disagree about moral and political values and what the consequences of those disagreements are for political theory. I also work on the methods of political theory and the relationship between moral philosophy and political philosophy. My current research explores the possibility of being both realistic about the limits of politics and critical of existing political orders by developing a theory of hope as a distinctively political virtue.

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Publications

– ‘Is realism barren?: normativity and story-telling’ (accepted for publication with CRISPP). View pre-publication copy here.

Abstract: Political realism irritates a lot of political theorists and political theory also irritates a lot of political realists. This mutual animosity has its roots in a disagreement about normativity and how to view the relationship between normativity and political theory. One source of irritation lies in the tension between realist claims to methodological unorthodoxy, and their often orthodox substantive conclusions about political legitimacy, human behaviour, the limits of the state, and the fixity of politics. A second cause of irritation towards realists is that the target (usually Rawls) is misidentified, uncharitably mischaracterised, and his sins overstated. Third, even if the realist critique holds, realists seem unable to turn their methodological insurgency into positive theorising. Or, to paraphrase E.H. Carr, realism is barren. Realism’s barrenness corresponds to the three irritations already mentioned: its substantive conclusions are bleak, its critique is stillborn, and its attempts to move beyond a technical dispute about normativity are both theoretically and practically unproductive. It is the final irritation about productiveness that I address here, by considering the ‘radical realism’ of Raymond Geuss. The argument proceeds in three steps to show how realism in its current state is indeed barren, why radical realism should avoid barrenness, and how it might overcome that barrenness through an embrace of story-telling as a methodological approach.

– Instability and Modus Vivendi, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, vol.24, No.2, pp.157-178). View ungated copy here.

Abstract: Political theories of modus vivendi start from an assumption of deep and permanent disagreement about conceptions of the good and conceptions of justice. In response to this disagreement, modus vivendi provides an account of legitimacy as a result of a minimally restricted bargaining process. This account of legitimacy faces three major criticisms. Firstly, that the political arrangement will be unstable, secondly that a modus vivendi will institutionalise injustice, and thirdly, that it will institutionalise the status quo. I concede the objection that a modus vivendi is unstable in order to address the more serious objections that it institutionalises injustice or the status quo. Through its acceptance of instability, modus vivendi theory is no more likely than liberal theory to institutionalise injustice. Far from the conservatism it is often associated with, modus vivendi permits radical political doctrines and radical political action in a way that is precluded by mainstream liberal theory.

– ‘Rorty, Habermas, and Radical Social Criticism’ (with Michael Bacon) in Sarin Marchetti (ed.), The Ethics, Epistemology and Politics of Richard Rorty (London: Routledge, 2023). View pre-publication copy here.

Abstract: Richard Rorty’s political philosophy is often viewed as orthodox liberalism with an unorthodox philosophical grounding. He has been criticised for both his uncritical attitude towards liberalism and for undermining the foundations of liberal politics. Against this portrayal of Rorty’s political philosophy, this chapter makes three connected claims. First, despite Rorty’s expressed ‘bourgeois liberal’ reformism, there are philosophical resources within his political philosophy which indicate a latent programme of radical social criticism. Second, the chapter argues against the charge that Rorty is a relativist who lacks the necessary foundations for social criticism by comparing the liberalisms of Rorty and Jürgen Habermas. Thirdly, the chapter argues that Rorty’s anti-foundationalism would commit him, by his own lights, to engage in radical criticism of actually-existing liberalism. On this account of Rorty’s political philosophy, the idea that redescription of our social situation might take us beyond bourgeois liberalism becomes a real possibility.

– ‘Richard Rorty’ (with Michael Bacon), entry in Mortimer Sellers & Stephan Kirste (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy.

Abstract: Richard Rorty became increasingly interested in social and political questions in his writings from the early 1980s. In them Rorty offers no sustained analysis of issues in jurisprudence, but his few remarks on the law can be understood by placing them in the context of his understanding of pragmatism. In his widely contested definition, pragmatism is the ‘doctrine that there are no constraints on inquiry save conversational ones – no wholesale constraints derived from the nature of the objects, or of the mind, or of language, but only those retail constraints provided by the remarks of our fellow-inquirers’. Pragmatism takes an image of inquiry as confrontation with the non-human world and re-describes it as conversation between the members of social practices. In this entry, we use Rorty’s pragmatism to reconstruct his views on some of the central questions in jurisprudence, including the philosophy of human rights law and the debate between H.L.A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin.

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PhD thesis

– Moral Pluralism and Political Disagreement

Abstract: This thesis addresses two crucial questions of contemporary political theory: why do we disagree about value and how should we respond politically to that disagreement? I make three major arguments that correspond to each of the three sections. I outline and analyse two theories of moral pluralism in Section I, value pluralism and epistemic pluralism, which offer explanations of disagreement about value. Value pluralism is a widely held metaphysical doctrine that makes a claim about the plural nature of value. Epistemic pluralism is a less widely known theory that makes a claim about the difficulty of reasoning about value. I argue that epistemic pluralism is the appropriate form of moral pluralism for political theory because, unlike value pluralism, it does not rely on controversial metaphysical ideas. In Section II I analyse two theories of public reason liberalism, John Rawls’s political liberalism and Gerald Gaus’s justificatory liberalism, both of which develop an account of political legitimacy in light of epistemic pluralism. I reject both theories on the basis that they are incompatible with a commitment to epistemic pluralism. In Section III I develop a political theory of modus vivendi which accords with my account of epistemic pluralism. Building on the work of other modus vivendi theorists I outline a theory of legitimacy that depends on two political conditions, peace and acceptance. In the final chapter I defend my conception of modus vivendi from various criticisms in order to show that a theory of modus vivendi is not a counsel of despair.

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Other writing

– Against the Investigatory Powers Bill (Democratic Audit)

– Why our pursuit of happiness is flawed (BBC)

– Starmerism isn’t working (Renewal)