‘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
AuthorsTillyris, D. and Edyvane, D.
AbstractThe 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.
KeywordsSociology and political science; Philosophy; Politics; Realism; Hannah Arendt; Isaiah Berlin; Stuart Hampshire
Year2022
JournalPhilosophy & Social Criticism
PublisherSAGE
ISSN0191-4537
1461-734X
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537211066849
Official URLhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01914537211066849
Publication dates
Online19 Jan 2022
Publication process dates
Accepted11 Nov 2021
Deposited31 Jan 2022
Accepted author manuscript
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
References

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