Ideology Critique from Nowhere: Challenges for the Epistemic Approach to Political Normativity

Broadly speaking, two views have crystallized in recent years’ discussion about political normativity in political theory. On the ‘moral view’, while moral norms and political norms are conceptually distinct, they are not fully independent to each other. On the ‘non-moral view’, by contrast, moral norms and political norms are dichotomous, in the sense that a moral norm is never also a political norm. Both instrumental and functional approaches adopting the non-moral view have been critically examined in the literature. There is a third non-moral approach, however, which we call an ’epistemic approach’ to political normativity, which has not undergone a similar scrutiny. This approach has become increasingly popular, especially among theorists who call themselves radical realists. The epistemic approach is inspired by Williams’ and Geuss’ emphasis on the importance of “accuracy” in the political domain, that is, of basing our political evaluations on accurate factual information about “how things really stand”. Radical realists typically take ideology critique to be a central task in political theory and believe that many of our normative ideas in the political sphere are inaccurate, distorted by illusions. Proponents of the epistemic approach suggest that these knowledge deficiencies should be remedied by empirically-informed genealogical analyses, historical reconstructions of the origin and development of salient political concepts through which some of our intuitions are revealed as mistaken or illusionary. In this paper, we demonstrate that the epistemic approach faces problems. Indeed, we agree that it seems sensible to hold that epistemic norms, such that we should strive for our believes to be true, are orthogonal to moral norms, in line with the non-moral view. Moreover, we agree that epistemic norms are highly relevant for political theory, since the majority of our normative political claims rely on factual circumstances. Careful investigation of the empirical basis for our normative claims may show that they rely on mistakes. However, we argue that the epistemic approach faces two main problems. First, while it is true that epistemic norms are distinct from moral norms, they are neither distinct for the political domain nor sufficient for it. In all areas of normativity, we both want and need all of our normative conclusions to be based on the factual circumstances, whether we are addressing morality proper, instrumental or prudential reasoning, or the political domain. Second, even the most undistorted understanding of the (non-moral) facts does not entail a normative conclusion. In other words, while epistemic norms are necessary, they cannot replace practical, action-guiding norms (i.e., practical normativity). The question of whether an investigation (genealogical or otherwise) into our normative concepts and beliefs will debunk our normative beliefs is an open question. If we find out that our normative political claims rely on distorted beliefs, they are no longer justified—unless, of course, also the undistorted beliefs at the end of the empirical or conceptual investigation still support the normative claims. Whether there are any “historical distortions” that should impact, e.g, a conception of justice calls for a normative argument.