Value, Conflict, and Order

Value, Conflict, and Order. Berlin, Hampshire, Williams, and the Realist Revival in Political Theory. Edward Hall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.

Is the purpose of political philosophy to portray ideal values to which political regimes should aspire or ask how people can live together as the world really is? The latter approach is advocated by “realist” thinkers in contemporary political philosophy. In Values, Conflict, and Order, Hall builds on the works of Isiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, and Bernard Williams to establish a political realist’s theory of politics for the twentieth-first century. This approach, Hall argues, can help us make navigate the conflicting political demands in our society, the compromises required, and how to secure political legitimacy.

According to Hall, these three thinkers articulate a normative political theory unsullied by the political world as we experience it. In contrast to someone like Rawls, who ignore such realities, these thinkers see politics as a response to the human condition that reflects the need to come to binding decisions on subjects when deep disagreement exists. While Berlin’s, Hampshire’s, and William’s views in political philosophy are not identical, they share common aims that Hall argues lends a certain unity of purpose in their works. They each propound a deep account of the limitations of philosophical ethics and, in doing so, offer powerful rejection of the view that moral conflict can be overcome in either theory or practice.

Their works begins from the view that human nature drastically underdetermines answers to the question of the best life for human beings as there is not a determinate enough conception of human well-being that can underwrite such judgments. They also reject any systematization of moral or political ideas to direct human behavior. Finally, they insist that moral philosophy must start with our own moral experience which reveals to ourselves that there are fundamental values in conflict with each other. Political philosophy must make sense of this condition rather than imagining it away or trying to overcome it.

In challenging the pretensions of moral philosophy, Hall draws out these lessons from Berlin’s, Hampshire’s, and William’s writings and reveal the limitations of philosophical ethics and the power of politics. Rather than engaging in a historical analysis of each thinker, Hall shows how these thinkers’ works contribute to the current ongoing debates in political theory. In this context he defines political realism as “Thucydidean” with politics being a distinct domain of action and one of conflict. Instead of striving for justice, political philosophers should seek stability and be skeptical of theories that prioritized idealistic and utopian political projects.

In his chapters about Berlin, Hall argues that Berlin endorses a view about the impurity of political theory which is compatible with realism. Berlin’s theory of value pluralism also encourages us to conceive of politics very differently than contemporary political theorists think of it today. Although Hall does not believe Berlin is a political realist, his ideas are compatible with political realism.

With regards to Hampshire, Hall argues that moral and political conflict is a sign of a proper functioning of the human imagination, thereby rejecting the possibility of any political ideal in the first place. For Hampshire, considerations of basic procedural fairness and compromise should be central to our understanding of politics, a position that Hall expresses reservations as being too thin to function in the political world.

Hall concludes with his study of Williams, arguing there is a connection between his work on ethics and politics. According to Williams, if we are to work within the limits of philosophy, we need to think more realistically about philosophy’s role (or lack) in society. But we also need to be hopeful in our ability to recognize we can live ethically and politically worthwhile lives. Williams’ account of liberalism reconciles these two seemingly contradictory propositions. Our commitment to liberalism is not the same as a “triumph of moral understanding”: we hope that our commitment to liberalism can stand up to reflection without collapsing into smug self-righteousness.

Values, Conflict, and Order not only recovers a tradition in political thought that has been neglected but revives it in a way that directly engages in how political theory is done and how we should think about politics. Providing a firm theoretical foundation for realism, the book provides an alternative to Rawlsian liberalism in the Anglo-American tradition. It should be read by those who aspire for politics to be something other than what it perhaps is.