‘Painted scenes’ or ‘empty pageants’? Superficiality and depth in (realist) political thought

Journal article

Tillyris, D. and Edyvane, D. 2022. ‘Painted scenes’ or ‘empty pageants’? Superficiality and depth in (realist) political thought. Philosophy & Social Criticism. https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537211066849

Publication dates
Authors	Tillyris, D. and Edyvane, D.
Abstract	The realist injunction to attend to the ‘realities of politics’ when we do political philosophy, though obviously appropriate, is highly platitudinous. By drawing on the underappreciated realist insights of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Hannah Arendt, we elaborate a neglected distinction between two antagonistic conceptions of political reality – the realism of surface and the realism of depth – and consider its implications for the recent realist turn. We illustrate how that distinction reveals some neglected tensions and incoherencies within contemporary realism and go some way towards untangling and addressing these. Specifically, we enrich the realist charge and highlight two directions which realist scholarship can pursue in its endeavour to offer a meaningful alternative to moralism: an emphasis on i) Vichian fantasia – a kind of knowledge which entails historical awareness but also sensitivity to philology; and ii) suffering and injustice as a basis for critique and for developing a suitable political sphere.
Keywords	Sociology and political science; Philosophy; Politics; Realism; Hannah Arendt; Isaiah Berlin; Stuart Hampshire
Year	2022
Journal	Philosophy & Social Criticism
Publisher	SAGE
ISSN	0191-4537
	1461-734X
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)	https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537211066849
Official URL	https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01914537211066849
Online	19 Jan 2022
Publication process dates
Accepted	11 Nov 2021
Deposited	31 Jan 2022
Accepted author manuscript	Painted Scenes and Empty Pageants_Philosophy and Social Criticism_Final Version.pdf License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 File Access Level Open
Output status	Published
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