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Epilogue: From Metanorms to Metaphysics
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Epilogue from metanorms to metaphysics If I keep from meddling with people, they take care of themselves, If I keep from commanding people, they behave themselves, If I keep from preaching at people, they improve themselves, If I keep from imposing on people, they become themselves. —lao-tzu We thought of using these lines from Lao-tzu as the epigraph for this book. But we eventually realized that doing so might undermine the seriousness with which we could hold to our political non-perfectionism.1 After all, it would seem that by endorsing these lines we would also be endorsing the view that political orders should bring about certain desirable social ends, that is to say, a kind of perfectionism. This criticism seems plausible to us. But are we not already too late? If we were tempted by these lines from Laotzu in the first place, are we not being disingenuous in our anti-perfectionist stance? Are we not, in other words, being secretly perfectionist in our politics while dogmatically adhering to a non-perfectionist political doctrine for the sake of consistency rather than truth? These questions in turn raise an interesting philosophical one. If we believe that the minimal state, as we have argued for it here, would actually produce the results described by Lao-tzu above, would we necessarily contradict our non-perfectionist politics? To answer this question, we believe we must consider more directly the relationship between metaphysics and political theory. The position held by contemporary political philosophers seems to be that there is no necessary or needed connection between metaphysical and political theories. Not only does someone like Rawls, as we noted earlier, 1. Elaine Sternberg’s commentary on our argument helped us to come to this realization. from metanorms to metaphysics 341 wish to separate politics from ‘‘comprehensive’’ philosophy, but virtually no political philosophers feel a compulsion to outline a metaphysical theory or identify their chosen metaphysical framework before engaging in political philosophy.2 We did otherwise in our opening chapter, although all of the things that we are committed to when we identify ourselves as ‘‘neoAristotelian ’’ may need further development. Some of the elements of what we are committed to have been, of course, filled in during the intervening discussions; but another work on more metaphysical and epistemological themes would seem to be a required sequel to this one, if we are serious about there being a connection. Yet even if we undertook such an endeavor, is it clear how a discussion of, say, the problem of universals would have any direct implications for political philosophy? It is certainly true that a discussion of a metaphysical topic, and indeed even the arguments employed during such a discussion, may have little or nothing to do with political theory. But it does not follow from that admission that the conclusions one draws or argues for are not much more relevant to what can plausibly be said about the political. It may very well be that at least some conclusions one draws in the metaphysical realm—for example, conclusions about the nature and purpose of human beings—have rather direct relevance to politics and political theory. But a certain prima facie skepticism about even this should remain, for do we not find thinkers with rather similar metaphysical commitments having rather different sorts of politics? Are we ourselves not an example of this, given that most neo-Aristotelians are not classical liberals? But to repeat a point made in Chapter 12, the fact that theorists differ is not an argument that a theory may imply different contradictory conclusions. Therefore, it is perhaps a useful bit of information that most neo-Aristotelians are not classical liberals, but it is certainly not decisive of anything. Consequently, we make no headway toward determining whether or not metaphysical commitments need be considered for political theorizing by knowing that people 2. The case of political theorists—using the distinction between political philosophers and political theorists to generally and respectively separate those in philosophy departments from those in political science departments—is more complicated. They often wish to identify a thinker’s more general philosophical theories with their politics drawing the implications of one to the other. But while this is done while studying the political philosophies of great philosophers , it is unclear to us whether any commitments of this sort are thought to be requirements for the contemporary theorist as positive theorist. Of course, we need to recognize that certain philosophical positions may...