What do you think?
Rate this book
Philosophy and Real Politics
A trenchant critique of established ideas in political philosophy and a provocative call for change
Many contemporary political thinkers are gripped by the belief that their task is to develop an ideal theory of rights or justice for guiding and judging political actions. But in Philosophy and Real Politics , Raymond Geuss argues that philosophers should first try to understand why real political actors behave as they actually do. Far from being applied ethics, politics is a skill that allows people to survive and pursue their goals. To understand politics is to understand the powers, motives, and concepts that people have and that shape how they deal with the problems they face in their particular historical situations.
Philosophy and Real Politics both outlines a historically oriented, realistic political philosophy and criticizes liberal political philosophies based on abstract conceptions of rights and justice.
Many contemporary political thinkers are gripped by the belief that their task is to develop an ideal theory of rights or justice for guiding and judging political actions. But in Philosophy and Real Politics , Raymond Geuss argues that philosophers should first try to understand why real political actors behave as they actually do. Far from being applied ethics, politics is a skill that allows people to survive and pursue their goals. To understand politics is to understand the powers, motives, and concepts that people have and that shape how they deal with the problems they face in their particular historical situations.
Philosophy and Real Politics both outlines a historically oriented, realistic political philosophy and criticizes liberal political philosophies based on abstract conceptions of rights and justice.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
22 people are currently reading
1200 people want to read
About the author
Raymond Geuss
49 books85 followersRaymond Geuss, Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, is a political philosopher and scholar of 19th and 20th century European philosophy.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
August 16, 2009
Guess savages what John Rawls calls "ideal theory" in political philosophy. Ideal theory, Guess argues, is not a realistic way of deciding what can or ought to be done politically. It is, as Daniel Dennet called John Searle's "Chinese room" thought experiment, an "intuition pump." And the intuitions it claims as "ours" are neither rooted in human nature nor shared by all of Rawls' audience. In the same direction, Guess criticizes Nozick's and Rawl's reliance on a formal concept of social equality which is literally incoherent. The moral intuition that social equality is an unqualified good ignores the problem of evaluating equality among individuals when no specific dimensions of equality are specified. Furthermore, making individuals equal along one dimension does not entail their equality along other dimensions; nor it is morally obvious that individuals ought to broadly equal among many dimensions. Here, Guess is arguing that both mainstream liberal ideas of justice as fairness (equality of treatment), and radically libertarian or anarchist anti-hierarchy sentiments (Rawls and Nozick, respectively) conceive power as inherently evil, and thus tend towards either claiming that power ought to be absolutely equally distributed in an ideal society, or sweeping it under the rug methodologically. As Guess sharply reminds us, some inequality of power is necessary to provide for the needs of different individuals, as the surgeon must have different kinds of power than the patient in order for the patient's medical needs to be met. It seems that institutional organization of power, of some kind, is necessary for meeting those needs.
Guess admits that the book's central idea is the dubiousness of ahistorical theorizing about what society ought to be, ideally, since this practice can become ideological. Like Kantian ethics, it leaves us with an account of "our" essential moral constitution as subjects, and what follows from that. It stops at moral philosophy, however, just like its inspiration in Kant. Such theory has no special utility in understanding power and legitimation (in Weber's sense), and therefor it cannot really help us to cope with the power held by our actual institutions for better and worse.
Guess admits that the book's central idea is the dubiousness of ahistorical theorizing about what society ought to be, ideally, since this practice can become ideological. Like Kantian ethics, it leaves us with an account of "our" essential moral constitution as subjects, and what follows from that. It stops at moral philosophy, however, just like its inspiration in Kant. Such theory has no special utility in understanding power and legitimation (in Weber's sense), and therefor it cannot really help us to cope with the power held by our actual institutions for better and worse.
May 30, 2014
This is worth reading for footnote 49 alone: "I think it possible to retain much of Adorno's analysis within a (revised) Leninist framework, but this is not a claim I propose to discuss in these pages."
Not exactly the kind of thing you get in standard political philosophizing, which ignores Adorno (probably because Habermas's horrifically bad reading of him has become the accepted understanding in the anglosphere) and regards Lenin as kind of Hitler with better prose. So at least Geuss is doing something different.
That said, there's a bit of a Wittgenstein feel to this project: it's really for people who buy the current philosophical mainstream approach to the matter, but feel a bit uncomfortable, and would like to know why. Just as Wittgenstein is a helpful purgative for analytically trained thinkers, Geuss would be for contemporary political theorists. But is there anything else to it? Perhaps not much that you don't already think.
i) don't construct ideals without attending to material circumstances. There is no 'justice,' only justice for...
ii) politics is about how people *act*, not what they believe. Their beliefs will contribute to actions, but the latter are the really important bits.
iii) political theory, and politics, is historical, and can't be understood aside from history.
Okay, sure. And he's right to bring ideology back into political discussion; and he's right to point out that standard liberal political theory just is ideological (i.e., it points us away from real problems). He's right that politics is about power relations, not about abstract good like justice/equality/fairness etc... But it's hard to see how any of this matters to anyone who doesn't already believe that standard liberal political theory is the way to go.
In other words, this is at best a ladder to be kicked away. The arguments are inconsistent (he wants to 'start with today,' rather than ideals, but doesn't want to start with rights discourse--which just *is* today's discourse), the prose pleasant, the length just right. But the audience is tiny and unimportant.
Not exactly the kind of thing you get in standard political philosophizing, which ignores Adorno (probably because Habermas's horrifically bad reading of him has become the accepted understanding in the anglosphere) and regards Lenin as kind of Hitler with better prose. So at least Geuss is doing something different.
That said, there's a bit of a Wittgenstein feel to this project: it's really for people who buy the current philosophical mainstream approach to the matter, but feel a bit uncomfortable, and would like to know why. Just as Wittgenstein is a helpful purgative for analytically trained thinkers, Geuss would be for contemporary political theorists. But is there anything else to it? Perhaps not much that you don't already think.
i) don't construct ideals without attending to material circumstances. There is no 'justice,' only justice for...
ii) politics is about how people *act*, not what they believe. Their beliefs will contribute to actions, but the latter are the really important bits.
iii) political theory, and politics, is historical, and can't be understood aside from history.
Okay, sure. And he's right to bring ideology back into political discussion; and he's right to point out that standard liberal political theory just is ideological (i.e., it points us away from real problems). He's right that politics is about power relations, not about abstract good like justice/equality/fairness etc... But it's hard to see how any of this matters to anyone who doesn't already believe that standard liberal political theory is the way to go.
In other words, this is at best a ladder to be kicked away. The arguments are inconsistent (he wants to 'start with today,' rather than ideals, but doesn't want to start with rights discourse--which just *is* today's discourse), the prose pleasant, the length just right. But the audience is tiny and unimportant.
January 15, 2019
This argument proceeds from the premise that “people often have no determinate beliefs at all” and “don’t know what they want or why they did something: even if they know or claim to know what they want, they can often give no coherent account” of it (2). This inability and the consequent lack of capacity to distinguish ‘empirical interest’ from ‘ethical principle’ is “not simply an epistemic failing” and is not subject to remedy, but is by contrast “a pervasive ‘inherent feature’ in human life” (30).
Further, “when Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia,” we should not understand him to be working through a contradiction to “resolve a temporal change of belief or desire” (id.)—disagreement with oneself as a basic principle of our operativity. The difficulties for purportedly individuated persons are insurmountable; when examining the conduct of states, the scales of difficulty are best measured in logarithmic terms, which makes the statement that “politics is applied ethics” (6) a special moment of incoherence. Because conduct can’t be predictable or understood even by actors themselves, an ‘ideal theory’ of ethics or applied ethics or politics is doomed. Author accordingly adopts “the opposite of the ‘ethics-first’ view” (9).
The principles, then, follow in easy sequence. First, “political philosophy must be realist” (9)—not understood as how people should ideally act, but rather how “institutions operate” (id.). Second, “political philosophy must recognize that politics is in the first instance about actions and the contexts of action” (11)—beliefs are very secondary, existing despite actions, irrelevant to actions, in contradiction to actions. Third, “politics is historically located” (13), occurring in mutable contexts; one great point here is that no one will “eat food in general” but always something very locally specific (14). Fourth, “politics is more like the exercise of a craft or art, than like the traditional conceptions of what happens when a theory is applied” (15)—which means that politics is a classical techne, situated within its own particular poesis, with appropriate ergon, and so on.
Before identifying the poesis and ergon, he wishes to work in “the realistic spirit of Hobbes” (23), certainly an odd place for leftwing theory to situate itself—and, instead of “an antecedent ontological specification” of the political, he prefers to work through a set of questions to flesh out his project. First, he invokes the ancient Leninist principle of ‘who whom?’—statements, if they are to be salient, require information “about particular concrete people doing things to other people” (24), the old Marxist postulate that any product of our society expresses relations between persons in it. Second, he works through Nietzsche’s idea regarding the “finitude of human existence” wherein “the structure of human valuation is always differential” (30). Third, he emphasizes the Weberian notion of legitimacy: for him, “politics was generally about collective forms of legitimating violence” (34). Consistent with prior principles, we should understand that “legitimatory mechanisms available in a given society change from one historical period to another” (35).
This leads to the ‘tasks’ of political theory, the poesis, surely: a “systematic attempt to understand how organized forms of acting together in a given society actually work” (37-38); “the impulse to evaluate our surroundings” (39); the “need for general orientation in action” (40), so as to avoid durkheimian anomie (41); making a “constructive contribution” through innovation (42), which includes fashioning “pragmatic tools” (48); and both “combating ideological illusion” or fostering “common ideological illusions” (53).
]The second half of the text works through several paradigmatic ‘failures of realism,’ such as
Further, “when Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia,” we should not understand him to be working through a contradiction to “resolve a temporal change of belief or desire” (id.)—disagreement with oneself as a basic principle of our operativity. The difficulties for purportedly individuated persons are insurmountable; when examining the conduct of states, the scales of difficulty are best measured in logarithmic terms, which makes the statement that “politics is applied ethics” (6) a special moment of incoherence. Because conduct can’t be predictable or understood even by actors themselves, an ‘ideal theory’ of ethics or applied ethics or politics is doomed. Author accordingly adopts “the opposite of the ‘ethics-first’ view” (9).
The principles, then, follow in easy sequence. First, “political philosophy must be realist” (9)—not understood as how people should ideally act, but rather how “institutions operate” (id.). Second, “political philosophy must recognize that politics is in the first instance about actions and the contexts of action” (11)—beliefs are very secondary, existing despite actions, irrelevant to actions, in contradiction to actions. Third, “politics is historically located” (13), occurring in mutable contexts; one great point here is that no one will “eat food in general” but always something very locally specific (14). Fourth, “politics is more like the exercise of a craft or art, than like the traditional conceptions of what happens when a theory is applied” (15)—which means that politics is a classical techne, situated within its own particular poesis, with appropriate ergon, and so on.
Before identifying the poesis and ergon, he wishes to work in “the realistic spirit of Hobbes” (23), certainly an odd place for leftwing theory to situate itself—and, instead of “an antecedent ontological specification” of the political, he prefers to work through a set of questions to flesh out his project. First, he invokes the ancient Leninist principle of ‘who whom?’—statements, if they are to be salient, require information “about particular concrete people doing things to other people” (24), the old Marxist postulate that any product of our society expresses relations between persons in it. Second, he works through Nietzsche’s idea regarding the “finitude of human existence” wherein “the structure of human valuation is always differential” (30). Third, he emphasizes the Weberian notion of legitimacy: for him, “politics was generally about collective forms of legitimating violence” (34). Consistent with prior principles, we should understand that “legitimatory mechanisms available in a given society change from one historical period to another” (35).
This leads to the ‘tasks’ of political theory, the poesis, surely: a “systematic attempt to understand how organized forms of acting together in a given society actually work” (37-38); “the impulse to evaluate our surroundings” (39); the “need for general orientation in action” (40), so as to avoid durkheimian anomie (41); making a “constructive contribution” through innovation (42), which includes fashioning “pragmatic tools” (48); and both “combating ideological illusion” or fostering “common ideological illusions” (53).
]The second half of the text works through several paradigmatic ‘failures of realism,’ such as
one fashionable way of failing to be realistic is to try to construct a society along the lines of an idealized legal system structured around a set of rights. Another way is to develop a full political theory by picking a single purported political ‘virtue’ from among the many human excellences and aspects of politics. (59)What follows is a critique of well-known theorists, such as Nozick on ‘rights’ (60 ff), Rawls on ‘justice’ (70 ff), uncritical notions of egalitarianism generally (76 ff), Rawls on ‘fairness’ (80 ff), and Rawls, poor thing, on ‘power’ (90 ff). If neo-kantian Rawls comes in for the most abuse, that is because “the western world is overwhelmingly neo-kantian in its inspiration” (98).
It is perfectly legitimate, I think, to criticize ‘Kantian liberalism’ on any number of grounds, and one does not need a fully developed theory of an alternative political philosophy or of an alternative social formation in order to do that. In extremis, Brecht is perfectly right: ‘Nothing but ad hominem abuse; that’s better than nothing.' (96)Perhaps fair to say that his realism is ‘neo-leninist’ overall (99).
January 15, 2020
Philosophy and Real Politics is, in essence, a polemic against the ethics-first approach to politics, heralded by the works of figures such as John Rawls. In this view (as Geuss puts it), we begin by determining universal ethical principles (and theories) independent of any particular political society or case and "then in a second step . . . apply that theory to the action of political agents". According to Geuss, political philosophy should be "realist" in that it should focus on "real motivation", upon "the way the social, economic, political, etc., institutions actually operate in some society at a given time, and what really does move human beings to act in given circumstances". It's necessary to point that Geuss's political "realism" does not deny the relevance or efficacy of norms per se; but he criticizes the seeping of the philosophical practice of moral evaluation into a generalized theory of politics. Particularly in the second chapter, Geuss develops his criticism of the philosophical approach taken up by Rawls and Robert Nozick by pointing out the contingency of their core ideas and conceptualizations regarding 'rights' and 'justice'.
This is a short book that is basically an elaboration of a lecture. The prose is clear and a general familiarity with the theories mentioned is enough for the reader to follow through. Guess admits that he can't be expected to develop a complete positive alternative to the view he's attacking in such a short book, and I think this is its main liability; it is, in the end, incomplete and somewhat abstract. This isn't to say that the criticisms that Geuss puts forth are not interesting or intriguing, but that as they pertain to this particular book, they leave something to be desired.
Individuals or groups can cultivate their ethical intuitions and exercise their capacities for moral approval or disapproval ad libitum...as long as they do not con-fuse that with attaining any understanding whatever of the world in which they live, or think that their (clarified) moral intuitions have some special standing as completely adequate guides to political action
This is a short book that is basically an elaboration of a lecture. The prose is clear and a general familiarity with the theories mentioned is enough for the reader to follow through. Guess admits that he can't be expected to develop a complete positive alternative to the view he's attacking in such a short book, and I think this is its main liability; it is, in the end, incomplete and somewhat abstract. This isn't to say that the criticisms that Geuss puts forth are not interesting or intriguing, but that as they pertain to this particular book, they leave something to be desired.
June 19, 2017
Spoiler warning! Here’s how Geuss concludes a section of this delightfully belligerent tract, which, more than anything I might write, ought to impart a flavour of what’s within: "The often noted absence in Rawls of any theory about how his ideal demands are to be implemented is not a tiny mole that serves as a beauty spot to set off the radiance of the rest of the face, but the epidermal sign of a lethal tumour… This is not a criticism of some individual aspect of Rawls’s theory, but a basic repudiation of his whole way of approaching the subject of political philosophy.” Boom. And, on a well known line in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia: "He then allows that bald statement to lie flapping and gasping for breath like a large, moribund fish on the deck of a trawler, with no further analysis or discussion, and proceeds to draw consequences from it.” Pow.
It’s unfair, perhaps, that I’ve just quoted two of among the most fun lines laying about Geuss’s Philosophy and Real Politics to characterise the book, but it’s hard not to when they’re just so deliciously severe. Still, it’s not all strum und dang, and beneath the invective lie some incredibly important and rather serious points regarding the state of political philosophy today. As the first quote might give away, one of the major thrusts of the book at work here is a “OK, but how exactly is that going to work in real life?” kinda of deal. Hence: Philosophy (on the one hand), and Real Politics (on the other). And as an advocate of ‘real politics’, Guess makes it his mission to go to town on just those philosophical idealisations that, blind to questions of agency, power, interests and even time, simply render themselves useless at dealing with the realities of political action.
Action, that is, insofar as for Guess, it is indeed ‘action and the contexts of action’ which are the true subject matter of political philosophy (and not, say, beliefs or abstract discussions about ’the good’ or ’the right'). Hence too Geuss’s seemingly unorthodox recourse to Lenin, in whose analytic (although not necessarily political) footsteps Geuss follows, rehabilitating, as the fundamental question of political inquiry: ‘who does what to whom, and for whose benefit?’ Absent the attention to these ‘real’ axes of political action, there would simply be no political philosophy worthy of claiming itself to be, well - relevant to politics. And in that case, ought it call itself political philosophy at all? Thus the urging, on Geuss’s part, to remind philosophers of just what ‘real politics’ entails, and the necessity of engaging it on its own terms (rather than those provided by the ideal theorisations of philosophy-from-without).
While admittedly only a short book (one that just clips the hundred page mark), it’s succinctness gives it all the more a punch that makes this an absolute bombshell of a read. It helps also that Geuss is simply a fabulous writer, one whose formulations are both pithy and downright entertaining. Acting, in fact, as somewhat of a teaser to his other writing (this is after all an expansion to a lecture delivered by Geuss in 2007), I’d also recommend that this be read in conjunction with some of his other, contemporaneous work as well (Politics and the Imagination, and Outside Ethics in particular). In any case, one will be left either salivating for more, or seething over what’s in fact here - and there’s little more one can ask of a book of intelligent and provocative political philosophy.
It’s unfair, perhaps, that I’ve just quoted two of among the most fun lines laying about Geuss’s Philosophy and Real Politics to characterise the book, but it’s hard not to when they’re just so deliciously severe. Still, it’s not all strum und dang, and beneath the invective lie some incredibly important and rather serious points regarding the state of political philosophy today. As the first quote might give away, one of the major thrusts of the book at work here is a “OK, but how exactly is that going to work in real life?” kinda of deal. Hence: Philosophy (on the one hand), and Real Politics (on the other). And as an advocate of ‘real politics’, Guess makes it his mission to go to town on just those philosophical idealisations that, blind to questions of agency, power, interests and even time, simply render themselves useless at dealing with the realities of political action.
Action, that is, insofar as for Guess, it is indeed ‘action and the contexts of action’ which are the true subject matter of political philosophy (and not, say, beliefs or abstract discussions about ’the good’ or ’the right'). Hence too Geuss’s seemingly unorthodox recourse to Lenin, in whose analytic (although not necessarily political) footsteps Geuss follows, rehabilitating, as the fundamental question of political inquiry: ‘who does what to whom, and for whose benefit?’ Absent the attention to these ‘real’ axes of political action, there would simply be no political philosophy worthy of claiming itself to be, well - relevant to politics. And in that case, ought it call itself political philosophy at all? Thus the urging, on Geuss’s part, to remind philosophers of just what ‘real politics’ entails, and the necessity of engaging it on its own terms (rather than those provided by the ideal theorisations of philosophy-from-without).
While admittedly only a short book (one that just clips the hundred page mark), it’s succinctness gives it all the more a punch that makes this an absolute bombshell of a read. It helps also that Geuss is simply a fabulous writer, one whose formulations are both pithy and downright entertaining. Acting, in fact, as somewhat of a teaser to his other writing (this is after all an expansion to a lecture delivered by Geuss in 2007), I’d also recommend that this be read in conjunction with some of his other, contemporaneous work as well (Politics and the Imagination, and Outside Ethics in particular). In any case, one will be left either salivating for more, or seething over what’s in fact here - and there’s little more one can ask of a book of intelligent and provocative political philosophy.
January 10, 2018
A new favourite, Geuss does a bang-up job of knocking Nozick and Rawls off their disparate pedestals, where they respectively and unqualifiedly support rights and justice. He provides support to the notion that the use of moral theory as a basis of political theory is not much more than wishful thinking.
It's a short read, probably mercifully, as it allows you to guiltlessly reread it almost immediately. If you find the premise put forth in the introduction, which happens to be available as the sample Kindle copy.
It's a short read, probably mercifully, as it allows you to guiltlessly reread it almost immediately. If you find the premise put forth in the introduction, which happens to be available as the sample Kindle copy.
January 8, 2018
دربارهی این بود که برای ارائهی نظریهی سیاسی، یا فلسفهی سیاسی به چه نکاتی باید توجه کنیم و چه چیزایی رو پیشفرض نگیریم و اینا. و به اینها هم از طریق نقد کسانی مثل لنین و رالز پرداخته بود
August 19, 2018
In this rather rather short book Raymond Geuss sets out to set the record straight on thinking about politics as nothing more than applied ethics. In particular he takes issue with a "Kantian strand" in political philosophy whose major representatives he identifies as Rawls and Nozick.
In the course of a rich albeit sometimes polemical discussion he faults "approaches to politics through "intuitions""(p.91) insofar as these portray themselves not as the product of a particular community at a particular time with particular social circumstances and as a consequences find themselves insufficiently sensitive to the fruits of historical or ethnological research, which would call their time- and placeless status into question.
In a wonderfully colorful passage he faults Nozick for taking it for granted that "individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)" (p. ix of Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia): Nozick "then allows that bald statement to lie flapping and gasping for breath like a large, moribund fish on the deck of a trawler, with no further analysis or discussion, and proceeds to draw consequences from it"(.p 64). Geuss at this point invites us to question the validy of this starting point and points out its lack and need of argumentative support.
Furthermore, Rawls and his conception of choice under the veil of ignorance find themselves to be worthy of critique. Geuss raises the question why we should even "agree that choice under conditions of ignorance is a good criterion for deciding what kind of society we would wish to have" (p. 87) and wonders about how the opinions of someone like William Morris would fit into choice under the veil of ignorance. Morris preferred the life of fishermen and peasants on Iceland to "Britain with its extreme discrepancies in wealth and welfare, even though the least well-off in Britain were in absolute terms better off"(p.87) and this preference was borne out of directly experiencing such societies, supposedly leading him to come to have a belief about "the specific social (and other) ills that flowed from the ways in which extreme wealth could be used in industrial capitalist society"(p.87). But such knowledge would be unavailable to anyone who would have to make a choice under conditions of the veil of ignorance and suspicion is raised that the veil of ignorance could be rigged to "blank out knowledge of [...] particular experiences" (p.87). In a similar vein the veil of ignorance is faulted for doing "too little in the case of deeply rooted forms of oppresion or ideological delusion"(p.88) and the project of Rawls is in fact identified as ideological insofar as it "draws attention away from the phenomenon of power and the way in which it influences our lives" (p.90).It is then suggested that the later Rawls of The Law of Peoples attempted "to reconcile Americans to an idealised version of their own social order at the end of the twentieth century"(p.89).
Moreover, in his discussion about the notion of equality in politics Geuss draws Leibniz's principle of identity and on the "very firm and explicit"(p.67) antiegalitarian strand in the thought of Marx and Engels (especially in Kritik des Gothaer Programms) in order to expose the incoference of "the very idea of total, perfect, and complete egalitarianism" (p.77). Abstract egalité is exposed as a confusion and we are reminded that it would be no mistake to see "equality" as "a mere instrument or contribtory condition in some circumstances"(p.80) to "things as health, development and excercise of powers, fruitful social interaction"(p.80).
Against this "Kantian Strand" Geuss gestures towards a "realist" political philosophy. We are reminded of the importance of Lenin's question кто кого? and invited to expand the question to the form "Who what to whom for whose benefit?" (p.25) in order to see that "to think politically is to think about agency, power, and interests, and the relations among these"(p.25). We are reminded of the importance of history, of context, of the right timing in politics. The topic of legitimacy will be of importance to the realist as well and we can learn from Geuss about why understanding, evaluation, orientation, conceptual innovation and ideology should play a central role in political theory. Geuss rightly notes that conceptual innovation is not only a matter of mirroring "any fully preexisting reality"(.p.46) but that such innovations "imprint themselves on the world"(p.46) and furthermore they will "allow one to think more clearly about social processes in train, and could help one to see what actions are required"(p.46).
One might take issue with the accuracy (and fairness) of Geuss's portrayals of Rawls and Nozick as well as lament the fact that Geuss does not develop a full positive alternative to the view he criticizes (as has been done by Thomas Hurka here: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/philosophy-a...) but we should not forget that the rhetorical devices employed against Rawls and Nozick might be intended simply to "change the topic" in order not to become complicit in, for example, the ever growing Rawls-industry. Surely, Geuss is not shy about rejecting the legitimacy of a supposed requirement to provide a positive and constructive alternative to the status quo before the work of critique can begin. Perhaps Geuss is right, and we should direct our attention away from the Kantian strand in political philosophy if we are to achieve a clear view of politics undistorted by a certain kind of ideology.
Be that as it may, a reader might be well advised not to forget Alasdair MacIntyre's comment that "Geuss lives dangerously, prescribing remedies drawn from Lenin, Nietzsche, and Weber that may have unpredictable side effects".
In the course of a rich albeit sometimes polemical discussion he faults "approaches to politics through "intuitions""(p.91) insofar as these portray themselves not as the product of a particular community at a particular time with particular social circumstances and as a consequences find themselves insufficiently sensitive to the fruits of historical or ethnological research, which would call their time- and placeless status into question.
In a wonderfully colorful passage he faults Nozick for taking it for granted that "individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)" (p. ix of Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia): Nozick "then allows that bald statement to lie flapping and gasping for breath like a large, moribund fish on the deck of a trawler, with no further analysis or discussion, and proceeds to draw consequences from it"(.p 64). Geuss at this point invites us to question the validy of this starting point and points out its lack and need of argumentative support.
Furthermore, Rawls and his conception of choice under the veil of ignorance find themselves to be worthy of critique. Geuss raises the question why we should even "agree that choice under conditions of ignorance is a good criterion for deciding what kind of society we would wish to have" (p. 87) and wonders about how the opinions of someone like William Morris would fit into choice under the veil of ignorance. Morris preferred the life of fishermen and peasants on Iceland to "Britain with its extreme discrepancies in wealth and welfare, even though the least well-off in Britain were in absolute terms better off"(p.87) and this preference was borne out of directly experiencing such societies, supposedly leading him to come to have a belief about "the specific social (and other) ills that flowed from the ways in which extreme wealth could be used in industrial capitalist society"(p.87). But such knowledge would be unavailable to anyone who would have to make a choice under conditions of the veil of ignorance and suspicion is raised that the veil of ignorance could be rigged to "blank out knowledge of [...] particular experiences" (p.87). In a similar vein the veil of ignorance is faulted for doing "too little in the case of deeply rooted forms of oppresion or ideological delusion"(p.88) and the project of Rawls is in fact identified as ideological insofar as it "draws attention away from the phenomenon of power and the way in which it influences our lives" (p.90).It is then suggested that the later Rawls of The Law of Peoples attempted "to reconcile Americans to an idealised version of their own social order at the end of the twentieth century"(p.89).
Moreover, in his discussion about the notion of equality in politics Geuss draws Leibniz's principle of identity and on the "very firm and explicit"(p.67) antiegalitarian strand in the thought of Marx and Engels (especially in Kritik des Gothaer Programms) in order to expose the incoference of "the very idea of total, perfect, and complete egalitarianism" (p.77). Abstract egalité is exposed as a confusion and we are reminded that it would be no mistake to see "equality" as "a mere instrument or contribtory condition in some circumstances"(p.80) to "things as health, development and excercise of powers, fruitful social interaction"(p.80).
Against this "Kantian Strand" Geuss gestures towards a "realist" political philosophy. We are reminded of the importance of Lenin's question кто кого? and invited to expand the question to the form "Who what to whom for whose benefit?" (p.25) in order to see that "to think politically is to think about agency, power, and interests, and the relations among these"(p.25). We are reminded of the importance of history, of context, of the right timing in politics. The topic of legitimacy will be of importance to the realist as well and we can learn from Geuss about why understanding, evaluation, orientation, conceptual innovation and ideology should play a central role in political theory. Geuss rightly notes that conceptual innovation is not only a matter of mirroring "any fully preexisting reality"(.p.46) but that such innovations "imprint themselves on the world"(p.46) and furthermore they will "allow one to think more clearly about social processes in train, and could help one to see what actions are required"(p.46).
One might take issue with the accuracy (and fairness) of Geuss's portrayals of Rawls and Nozick as well as lament the fact that Geuss does not develop a full positive alternative to the view he criticizes (as has been done by Thomas Hurka here: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/philosophy-a...) but we should not forget that the rhetorical devices employed against Rawls and Nozick might be intended simply to "change the topic" in order not to become complicit in, for example, the ever growing Rawls-industry. Surely, Geuss is not shy about rejecting the legitimacy of a supposed requirement to provide a positive and constructive alternative to the status quo before the work of critique can begin. Perhaps Geuss is right, and we should direct our attention away from the Kantian strand in political philosophy if we are to achieve a clear view of politics undistorted by a certain kind of ideology.
Be that as it may, a reader might be well advised not to forget Alasdair MacIntyre's comment that "Geuss lives dangerously, prescribing remedies drawn from Lenin, Nietzsche, and Weber that may have unpredictable side effects".
June 6, 2025
Hydrogen bomb (geuss) versus coughing baby (rawls)
March 6, 2023
If you have the misfortune to be amid the cult of ideal theory, this book may be useful. If you don’t, it may seem common sense.
August 18, 2020
"The often noted absence in Rawls of any theory about how his ideal demands are to be implemented," writes Geuss, "is not a tiny mole that serves as a beauty spot to set off the radiance of the rest of the face, but the epidermal sign of a lethal tumour." Fighting words! Well, Geuss doesn't have concrete prescriptions either - that would take him outside of political philosophy into, I guess, International Relations or some kind of think tank. But his critique of Rawls seems correct, and as I noted in my review of The Law of Peoples, the latter's endorsement of Western intervention against states that violate "international consensus" hasn't held up well. Guess argues not against the basic idea that politics must be based on a concept of the good developed by ethics, but against the idea that political theory can be developed outside of the context of the real world. In the real world, relations between political bodies are shaped by power, the invisible gravitational force of all political activity. To ignore this and convince ourselves that we can establish objective rules applied fairly is folly. It is no fortuitous co-incidence that the bodies of global economic consensus (IMF, World Bank, WTO) created by Western powers after WWII continue to favour those powers; the idea that invading Iraq was either objectively right (to free its citizens from Saddam Hussein's cruel tyranny) or objectively wrong (an arrogant destabilisation of a fragile equilibrium) are derived not from pure theoretical models, but from observations of the world as it is.
Such realpolitik sounds like so much nihilism. Yet Geuss insists that he isn't one, that he does believe in trying to implement justice, trying to do what is right and not what is expedient. Apparently, a fusion of the two approaches is required: the humility to understand that all political arrangements are contingent and shaped by power inequities, and the idealism to continue to seek arrangements that maximise the fair, just and good, however we understand those concepts.
Such realpolitik sounds like so much nihilism. Yet Geuss insists that he isn't one, that he does believe in trying to implement justice, trying to do what is right and not what is expedient. Apparently, a fusion of the two approaches is required: the humility to understand that all political arrangements are contingent and shaped by power inequities, and the idealism to continue to seek arrangements that maximise the fair, just and good, however we understand those concepts.
February 26, 2009
a counter to political philosophy/political theory that transplants theories of justice onto politics, geuss argues for political theory/philosophy where the "political" is something unique in its own right with its own logic that is particular to it. a wonderful critique of ideal theory and its proponents. geuss is a fantastic writer and brings a sharp, critical eye to the political philosophies that have dominated since the 1970s.
October 19, 2019
I read this book in order to better my own way of seeing and thinking of politics, and get a new grasp on realpolitik. The book's most salient point is this: Rather than coming up with an ideal framework or paradigm for acting politically and superimposing the world, political theorists should assess the world as it really is, not only in terms of power structures but also in terms of things like emotional reaction, resources, et cetera (if I am reading correctly). Following from this, such thinkers, if they really want to enact political change, should start with this analysis of the world as it really is(?), and build a theoretical-political bridge to how they want it to be.
This is all well and good, but the author takes half the book talking around this point without adding much else to it.
If you are looking to find a way on how to actually bridge the gap between philosophy and "real politics," the author admits that he has no intention of helping you do so. The most he is willing to do is explain some Leninist reiteration of "cui bono/prodest," (who benefits/will gain) as if Lenin himself was the first of any theorist to apply cui bono to politics, but the scope of the book is largely limited to criticising other writers for taking the "ideal-first" approach to political theory. In an era where Leftist academics and thinkers (note these groups are not one and the same) seem to be more keen to dispose rather than propose, and criticise political actors rather than help enact change, Philosophy and Real Politics offers little use beyond its initial point against Kantian "ideal-first" theories--a point which doesn't really require a whole book in order to be explained fully.
This is all well and good, but the author takes half the book talking around this point without adding much else to it.
If you are looking to find a way on how to actually bridge the gap between philosophy and "real politics," the author admits that he has no intention of helping you do so. The most he is willing to do is explain some Leninist reiteration of "cui bono/prodest," (who benefits/will gain) as if Lenin himself was the first of any theorist to apply cui bono to politics, but the scope of the book is largely limited to criticising other writers for taking the "ideal-first" approach to political theory. In an era where Leftist academics and thinkers (note these groups are not one and the same) seem to be more keen to dispose rather than propose, and criticise political actors rather than help enact change, Philosophy and Real Politics offers little use beyond its initial point against Kantian "ideal-first" theories--a point which doesn't really require a whole book in order to be explained fully.
May 1, 2020
üç kere üç dokuz eder
bilirsin
birin karesi birdir
kare kökü de
bilirsin
"mutlu aşk yoktur"
bilirsin
ama baharda ya da dışarda
sonsuz göğün altında
aşkın aşkla çarpımı
nedendir bilinmez
garip bir biçimde
hep sonsuzdur
kare kökü de yoktur
(sibernetik - turgut uyar)
[sibernetik -> κυβερνητης -> governor]
bilirsin
birin karesi birdir
kare kökü de
bilirsin
"mutlu aşk yoktur"
bilirsin
ama baharda ya da dışarda
sonsuz göğün altında
aşkın aşkla çarpımı
nedendir bilinmez
garip bir biçimde
hep sonsuzdur
kare kökü de yoktur
(sibernetik - turgut uyar)
[sibernetik -> κυβερνητης -> governor]
August 12, 2020
Excelente libro en filosofía política.
July 12, 2023
finally my politics are real (yours are fake)
March 20, 2019
I feel like I need to get back to it some time, when I will be wiser in philosophy because right now I wasn't able to understand everything. But it was interesting read, just a little hard to read for me.
May 18, 2024
Por su brevedad, claridad y sencillez quizás uno de los libros más interesantes y más útiles que he leído sobre filosofía política y, concretamente, sobre la aproximación realista.
May 4, 2021
I was recommended this book by a friend, who described it as a good meta-level framing to apply when thinking politically. Since its so short, only 100 pages or so, I was happy to jump back into some academic philosophy after a personal hiatus.
The first half of the book is (probably necessarily) quite dry, because Geuss is laying the theoretical groundwork for his political 'realism'. Though not the most exciting read, I definitely found myself nodding along to a lot of this section. He essentially critiques the abstracted approach that many philosophers take to political philosophy, instead endorsing a kind of 'philosophical neo-Leninism'; that is to say, discussions of politics must be grounded in contextual realities like "who is doing what to whom" and the fact that political actors are engaging in politics based on interests, power, and affordances rather than some 'rational' philosophical model (whatever that would even mean).
The second half of the book is where Geuss really shines in my opinion. In this section he applies this realist critique to various approaches and concepts common in contemporary political philosophy: rights, equality, justice, and finally (and most importantly) power. His critique of Rawls is particularly resonant in my opinion (and I say this as a fan of Rawls). He finishes out this section of the book with a discussion of power as a critical (though misused) concept in political theory. Questions of power and agency should always be on our minds when thinking about politics in the real world.
If there is a criticism to be levelled at this book, it is that it feels almost inanely true at some points; however, I feel that this more a result of Geuss' ability to present his argument so simply and convincingly that it immediately fuses with our common sense view of political theory, rather than because his view is particularly clichéd.
All in all, I found this book intellectually refreshing and invigorating. I would recommend it as a sort of 'palate-cleanser' to more conventional, theoretical political philosophy, and I wish I had read it in university. In particular, it has made me reassess my use of concepts like 'equality' and 'justice'. His arguments are so sensical that I suspect I won't find myself using these concepts any time soon. Consider me a sort of proto-realist of sorts. Good stuff.
The first half of the book is (probably necessarily) quite dry, because Geuss is laying the theoretical groundwork for his political 'realism'. Though not the most exciting read, I definitely found myself nodding along to a lot of this section. He essentially critiques the abstracted approach that many philosophers take to political philosophy, instead endorsing a kind of 'philosophical neo-Leninism'; that is to say, discussions of politics must be grounded in contextual realities like "who is doing what to whom" and the fact that political actors are engaging in politics based on interests, power, and affordances rather than some 'rational' philosophical model (whatever that would even mean).
The second half of the book is where Geuss really shines in my opinion. In this section he applies this realist critique to various approaches and concepts common in contemporary political philosophy: rights, equality, justice, and finally (and most importantly) power. His critique of Rawls is particularly resonant in my opinion (and I say this as a fan of Rawls). He finishes out this section of the book with a discussion of power as a critical (though misused) concept in political theory. Questions of power and agency should always be on our minds when thinking about politics in the real world.
If there is a criticism to be levelled at this book, it is that it feels almost inanely true at some points; however, I feel that this more a result of Geuss' ability to present his argument so simply and convincingly that it immediately fuses with our common sense view of political theory, rather than because his view is particularly clichéd.
All in all, I found this book intellectually refreshing and invigorating. I would recommend it as a sort of 'palate-cleanser' to more conventional, theoretical political philosophy, and I wish I had read it in university. In particular, it has made me reassess my use of concepts like 'equality' and 'justice'. His arguments are so sensical that I suspect I won't find myself using these concepts any time soon. Consider me a sort of proto-realist of sorts. Good stuff.
June 17, 2015
Raymond Geuss's very short work of political theory "Philosophy and Real Politics" is a great read and is able to pack many interesting and original ideas into its few pages. In particular, I really enjoyed Geuss's critiques of Robert Nozick's assumption that "rights" are the framework through which we must analyze political philosophy and John Rawls's prioritizing of justice as fairness above all other considerations as well as the appeals to intuitions and the "veil of ignorance" thought experiment which Rawls employs in order to ground his conception of justice as fairness and his convictions about its centrality to human affairs. Geuss argues that by elevating abstract conceptions of "rights," "equality," or "justice" as the raison d'etre of political philosophy, many contemporary and past political theorists have obscured the importance of power in political relations. Geuss also argues that politics is not so much a form of applied ethics as commonly supposed by political philosophers but is instead a skill which individuals and groups of people employ in particularistic social, economic, historical, and other contexts in order to further what they perceive to be their interests. My biggest criticism of Geuss's work here is that he ignores the contexts in which theories like Nozick's or Rawls's may be most important and why. Essentially, I take it that it may be the case that having normative notions about politics and ethics abstracted from particular cases is important in helping us to address our blindspots insofar as they collaborate with or create situations of tangible harm in the world. It is important to have these normative notions in the abstract independent of the particularities of any given situation because it helps us to expand our imaginative powers so that we may perceive and adequately address injustice and oppression. Unless I am misunderstanding Geuss, I think that his failure to engage with this aspect of political theory is the most damaging part of his critique of more hegemonic ways of philosophizing and theorizing about the political.
Read
October 6, 2021Tästä oli ihan kattavia arvosteluja englanniksi, joten kirjotan nyt vähän suomeksi. Raymond Geuss on sikäli kiinnostava hahmo, että hän on aika periksiantamaton kriittinen teoreetikko jonka myötämieliset viittaukset kohdistuvat lähinnä Leniniin ja Adornoon, joka on kuitenkin myös tehnyt uransa englanninkielisen filosofian konservatiivisissa keskuksissa, etenkin Cambridgessä. Kirjan pointti on lähinnä hyökätä politiikan "ideaaliteoriana" itsensä esittävää filosofiaa vastaan, keskeisenä silmätikkuna tässä on Rawls. En voi kyllä sanoa jotenkin kamalasti mitään positiivista kirjasta, sillä valtaosa on joko aika helposti tarjolla jos vähän miettii itse Rawlsin ja kumppanien ajattelutavan seurauksia tai sitten Geussin esitys on lähinnä äärimmäisen tiivistettyä vasemmistoteorian peruskauraa.
Mitään varsinaista vikaa kirjassa siis ei todellakaan ole ja allekirjoitan valtaosan sen teeseistäkin, se vaan ei pääse niidenkään kanssa kamalan pitkälle. Ihan hyvä johdanto "sisään" realistiseen poliittiseen filosofiaan, jos sattuu etsimään kannustinta oman kiinnostuksen pontevoittamiseen.
Menee helposti listalle kirjoja "kumpa olisin lukenut ekana vuonna yliopistoa", esim. Wolfin "What is Anarchism" kanssa, jota kritisoimaankin Geuss toimisi.
Mitään varsinaista vikaa kirjassa siis ei todellakaan ole ja allekirjoitan valtaosan sen teeseistäkin, se vaan ei pääse niidenkään kanssa kamalan pitkälle. Ihan hyvä johdanto "sisään" realistiseen poliittiseen filosofiaan, jos sattuu etsimään kannustinta oman kiinnostuksen pontevoittamiseen.
Menee helposti listalle kirjoja "kumpa olisin lukenut ekana vuonna yliopistoa", esim. Wolfin "What is Anarchism" kanssa, jota kritisoimaankin Geuss toimisi.
October 13, 2024
Short, written in accessible language. I came to this through the what’s left of philosophy podcast. I liked this for how it argues for a political philosophy that is grounded in a historical understanding of specific contexts, its framing of politics as a craft of a skill, and its insistence on attending to questions of power. It devotes a lot of time to tearing down Rawls and related ideal theories of politics, which I did not mind and sometimes enjoyed. But I would have liked to have seen more examples of how the proposed approach of political philosophy could be applied and what it might produce.
Edit (2024-10-13): bumping this to five stars because I can’t stop thinking about this little book, more than two years after having read it.
Edit (2024-10-13): bumping this to five stars because I can’t stop thinking about this little book, more than two years after having read it.
December 7, 2020
This book is interesting. Raymond Geuss takes a critical lens to political philosophies and examines the function of a political philosophy and the various components of said political philosophy into framework which can be used to create other political philosophy and can be used to analyze other political philosophies. In the second part Raymond uses real framework evaluate Rawls' theory of justice and Robert Nozick theory of utopia. In his conclusion he stresses that he does not have the the solutions to the right political philosophy but he states politics does not operate in a mechanical way but rather is living and will constantly change over time,
In part one of the book Geuss uses the Who/whom distinction formulated by Lenin. Geuss opens up Lenin's formulation to not only include who and but also who gave this person the authority over me and for whose benefit. I have new found appreciation for Lenin because of Geuss and now I know why Marxists hold Lenin in high esteem because of his clarity in his who/whom formula. According to Raymond Geuss the second question political philosophies should answer what priorities should political groups pursue given they have limited resources, powers, choices and time. Geuss cites Fredrich Nietzsche when discus which which sing differential options. Political groups must decide which option pursue and which option/s to sacrifice. Also political groups must factoring into the political choice. Third political question that Raymond Geuss thinks is important is Legitmacy. Geuss cites Max Weber argument that for a political agent must not only have reasons to pursue a course of action but also have others who find agents' course of action and reasons for this action are legitimate. Geuss says that Weber argues legitimation via tradition is a source of legitimacy. The peaceful transfer of power between the outgoing and incoming president has been a feature of American democracy since John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson. Legitimacy by popular vote or legitimacy by legal fiat are some of the other ways. Conceptual innovation is important for political agents to consider to help spread their philosophy to other political agents. The New Deal is one that was successful in America and one failure would be the third way in the UK because it was not accepted by large constituency. Ideology is the final aspect. Geuss advocates people need to accept a worldview of a political agent. Worldview is the ideology it emphasize actions one should take and other should take to conform to political actors will to be accepted.
According to Geuss political philosophy needs to answer who/whom distinction, It needs essential political actions to take and when to take them, create a conceptual innovation that the governed populace will accept, and legitimacy as well an ideology that the governed can accept and integrate into their worldview. I largely agree with Geuss except that ruling elite must provide enough jobs and foodstuffs to satisfy populace from revolting. How many times in human history have regimes been overthrown by outside and inside forces agitators use of persistent crop failure or economic depression depression? Many times. I understand that Geuss does not want to give recipes for future but I think he has to place importance on economic factors to give this more flesh. His writing is accessible but can be irritating at times because this tendency to equivocate when pressed. Overall It was a good book with some great insights into creating real political philosophy
In part one of the book Geuss uses the Who/whom distinction formulated by Lenin. Geuss opens up Lenin's formulation to not only include who and but also who gave this person the authority over me and for whose benefit. I have new found appreciation for Lenin because of Geuss and now I know why Marxists hold Lenin in high esteem because of his clarity in his who/whom formula. According to Raymond Geuss the second question political philosophies should answer what priorities should political groups pursue given they have limited resources, powers, choices and time. Geuss cites Fredrich Nietzsche when discus which which sing differential options. Political groups must decide which option pursue and which option/s to sacrifice. Also political groups must factoring into the political choice. Third political question that Raymond Geuss thinks is important is Legitmacy. Geuss cites Max Weber argument that for a political agent must not only have reasons to pursue a course of action but also have others who find agents' course of action and reasons for this action are legitimate. Geuss says that Weber argues legitimation via tradition is a source of legitimacy. The peaceful transfer of power between the outgoing and incoming president has been a feature of American democracy since John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson. Legitimacy by popular vote or legitimacy by legal fiat are some of the other ways. Conceptual innovation is important for political agents to consider to help spread their philosophy to other political agents. The New Deal is one that was successful in America and one failure would be the third way in the UK because it was not accepted by large constituency. Ideology is the final aspect. Geuss advocates people need to accept a worldview of a political agent. Worldview is the ideology it emphasize actions one should take and other should take to conform to political actors will to be accepted.
According to Geuss political philosophy needs to answer who/whom distinction, It needs essential political actions to take and when to take them, create a conceptual innovation that the governed populace will accept, and legitimacy as well an ideology that the governed can accept and integrate into their worldview. I largely agree with Geuss except that ruling elite must provide enough jobs and foodstuffs to satisfy populace from revolting. How many times in human history have regimes been overthrown by outside and inside forces agitators use of persistent crop failure or economic depression depression? Many times. I understand that Geuss does not want to give recipes for future but I think he has to place importance on economic factors to give this more flesh. His writing is accessible but can be irritating at times because this tendency to equivocate when pressed. Overall It was a good book with some great insights into creating real political philosophy
December 2, 2019
Geuss's slim volume (born out of a lecture) seeks to undermine political philosophy through his lens of 'realism': a focus on how contingent and constructed many ideas like justice and equality are, and therefore recentering politics around certain constraints of feasibility and what is 'realistically possible'. But this account is seriously deficient. In such a compact book he had better judiciously choose his arguments to critique, but what he instead does is center his discussion around a series of strawmans (Rawlsian justice in particular). There is a whiff of dismissiveness around contemporary political philosophy (and Kant, he really doesn't like Kant) as he returns to Aristotelian, Justinian, even Marxian ideas of justice/equality etc.
Ultimately what is unsatisfying, if not shoddy is his conflation of different substantive disagreements about concepts like justice with what he believes is the /real/ problem, a realistic vs. nonrealistic discussion of politics. But closely examining some statements he makes reveals these do map to what are philosophical (in the sense of being practiced in those ways he finds so disjoined) discussions."There is nothing special about equality; what is objectionable is depriving people of needed medical treatment, if it is in principle available," he claims -- fair enough, but this resembles more of the sufficientarian vs. egalitarian debate that is, a debate that has to reference the intuitions and foundational ideals that he is so skeptical about.
There are good reasons to argue for a move to realism in political philosophy. Geuss doesn't give you these good reasons, at least not in this book.
Ultimately what is unsatisfying, if not shoddy is his conflation of different substantive disagreements about concepts like justice with what he believes is the /real/ problem, a realistic vs. nonrealistic discussion of politics. But closely examining some statements he makes reveals these do map to what are philosophical (in the sense of being practiced in those ways he finds so disjoined) discussions."There is nothing special about equality; what is objectionable is depriving people of needed medical treatment, if it is in principle available," he claims -- fair enough, but this resembles more of the sufficientarian vs. egalitarian debate that is, a debate that has to reference the intuitions and foundational ideals that he is so skeptical about.
There are good reasons to argue for a move to realism in political philosophy. Geuss doesn't give you these good reasons, at least not in this book.
September 20, 2025
In this succinct yet ambitious book, Geuss critiques prevailing methods of studying politics, urging us toward a more “realist” perspective. For him, political philosophy must place heavier emphasis on history, shifting circumstances, and actual political actors rather than on abstract theories of justice, the framing of politics as “applied ethics,” or what he sees as overly idealistic accounts of political life.
I especially appreciated his definition of ideology and his critique of Rawls’s theory of justice, both of which were sharp and thought-provoking. As a new subscriber of Rawls, I really liked his point about power, but some of other critiques were extremely definitional and exist more in "philosophical diction" validity than real life.
I am still considering his defense against the charge that his work is vague and fails to tell us what to do. Geuss argues that this is precisely the point: politics is messy, contingent, and resisting neat prescriptions is more honest than pretending we can design universal blueprints. He suggests that not doing so would simply reinforce the very idealized theories he criticizes. Still, I am not fully convinced that this is enough.
On the downside, the writing style can be vague and occasionally frustrating; perhaps a result of his German descent. Also, to be fair, many of his earlier points felt like restatements of the obvious. While his central point is valid, the overall effect was a bit overly cautious.
I especially appreciated his definition of ideology and his critique of Rawls’s theory of justice, both of which were sharp and thought-provoking. As a new subscriber of Rawls, I really liked his point about power, but some of other critiques were extremely definitional and exist more in "philosophical diction" validity than real life.
I am still considering his defense against the charge that his work is vague and fails to tell us what to do. Geuss argues that this is precisely the point: politics is messy, contingent, and resisting neat prescriptions is more honest than pretending we can design universal blueprints. He suggests that not doing so would simply reinforce the very idealized theories he criticizes. Still, I am not fully convinced that this is enough.
On the downside, the writing style can be vague and occasionally frustrating; perhaps a result of his German descent. Also, to be fair, many of his earlier points felt like restatements of the obvious. While his central point is valid, the overall effect was a bit overly cautious.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 15, 2023
Stuff on power, politics, and idealogy is pretty good, some times middling. I can't help but feel you may as well just read Foucault, Nietzsche and Marx (add some Lenin and Gramsci as well).
Where Geuss comes into his own in this essay is his critique of Rawlsian liberalism. He is great at pointing out the fundamentally flawed nature of the intuitional-judgement coherentism that underlies Rawls' philosophy (and putting into light why it is such a dead end).
There needs to be more recognition among Rawlsians that intuitions are not to be trusted. Even this is admitted to in a way by the need for coherence among our judgements, but said coherence only functions with content already given to it by intuitions. So that clearly does not and will never work. There needs to be extra-intuitional and before-intuitional standard by which to analyse our judgements.
Where Geuss comes into his own in this essay is his critique of Rawlsian liberalism. He is great at pointing out the fundamentally flawed nature of the intuitional-judgement coherentism that underlies Rawls' philosophy (and putting into light why it is such a dead end).
There needs to be more recognition among Rawlsians that intuitions are not to be trusted. Even this is admitted to in a way by the need for coherence among our judgements, but said coherence only functions with content already given to it by intuitions. So that clearly does not and will never work. There needs to be extra-intuitional and before-intuitional standard by which to analyse our judgements.
March 29, 2024
This is a critique of the Kantian and new-Kantian approach to politics; in particular it criticizes formal, normative, a-historical, ideal, ethical, and “intuitive” concepts in Rawls and Nozick political theories. Alternatively, the author goes to Nietzsche, Weber, and in particular to Lenin in order to borrow and develop notions or “real politics” centered in concrete historical situations, interests, and especially in existing power structures. As a brief but broad critique, the book is not very convincing.
It is funny to realize that up to and even for Kant “real” meant rather whatness/essence and not actuality/existence - as used these days and in this book...
It is funny to realize that up to and even for Kant “real” meant rather whatness/essence and not actuality/existence - as used these days and in this book...
September 22, 2025
Yeah, the points against moralistic ideal theories are right, but they’re more like little sharp jabs than the building blocks for a new political philosophy. Realists can scream all they long about how they don’t need morality and intuitions, but they always end up smuggling in some (mostly moral) normativity.
So we end up left with not much for a positive program; although I do agree with changing “what grounds subjective rights?” to “is it possible to organize a modern society without the use of the concept of rights, and if not, why?”
So we end up left with not much for a positive program; although I do agree with changing “what grounds subjective rights?” to “is it possible to organize a modern society without the use of the concept of rights, and if not, why?”
February 26, 2019
Short read, would recommend it to beginners in political philosophy. Not much gained for me as Ive already covered alot of the arguments made through other philosophers like Marx, but nonetheless this book does a great job of summarising it in a very accessible manner. Wish I'd come across this sooner.
April 17, 2023
'Asking what the question is, and why the question is asked, is always asking a pertinent question. In some contexts a relative distinction between “the facts” and human valuations of those facts (or “norms”) might be perfectly useful, but the division makes sense only relative to the context, and can’t be extracted from that context, promoted, and declared to have absolute standing.'
Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews