Political Theory and Partisan Politics

4. Rationality in Liberal Politics

CHAPTER 4 Rationality in Liberal Politics Thomas A. Spragens, Jr. The topic we are addressing is, in its generic form, one of the oldest and one of the most continuous issues of political theory and political practice : What is the role of reason in politics? Is politics, rightly understood and rightly practiced, an activity in which the cognitive powers play an important role? Or is it an arena in which the participants deploy only their will, unconstrained by rationality in any way or form? The answers given have ranged from one extreme to the other—from those who see the only legitimate form of society as one in which reason reigns supreme to those who deny reason any possible or legitimate political function at all. My purposes here are twofold: first, to play the role of Lockean “underlaborer,” adding some clarity to the issues at stake by clearing away some of the conceptual underbrush; and second, to stake out what I regard to be the most salutary and defensible answer to the question within the context of liberal democracy. First, the underbrush. In order to get a clear fix on the issues and on what is at stake, it is important to pay some careful attention to the definition(s) of the two key terms of the equation: reason and politics. Each of these concepts has been assigned a multiplicity of meanings. Many of these definitions are conceptually and normatively tendentious , sometimes intentionally so. As a consequence, what is offered as an answer to the question about the proper role of reason in politics may sometimes be little more than exercise in tautology, masking itself as an empirical claim. My first suggestion in my capacity as underlaborer is that we should try to dispense as much as possible with substantively loaded definitions of the term “politics.” If politics be defined either by reference to claims about ordinary usage or by stipulation as “a form of conflict,” a conceptual value-slope is created that works—without necessity of 73 74 THOMAS A. SPRAGENS, JR. argumentation—against those who believe that political life is/can be/should be seen and conducted as a cooperative enterprise. Thus, a lot of perspectives, and not simply those of rationalist philosophers, become labeled as “anti-political.” On the other hand, Christian Bay (1965) once wrote an article that contrasted politics and “pseudo-politics.” On his account, “politics” was defined as a form of public association in which people worked together on behalf of a principled conception of the common good. And a form of interaction that was a matter of purely self-interested haggling or conflict he proposed to style as “pseudo-political,” hence a mere pretender to the real thing. Here the conceptual value-slope runs the other direction. My suggestion is that we accept neither one of these stipulative definitions—which tend to, and are often intended to, prejudice our view of the role that reason may or may not play in public life—and try to get back to more level ground, conceptually speaking. I propose that we ask about the role of reason in our “political association,” with “political” here referring simply to the space (I started to say arena or forum, but note how these metaphors themselves are conceptually prejudicial) in which we create our public institutions and formulate our public policies. The extent to which the mode of association is cooperative or conflictual, deliberative or willful, is left open. It is also important not to predetermine the outcome of our inquiry by adopting uncritically a particular conception of “rationality.” We must keep clearly in mind that both philosophers and people on the street use the terms reason and rationality in a variety of ways. Whether “reason” has any possible and desirable role to play in politics, therefore , may depend upon exactly what form or conception of rationality one has in mind. And, correlatively, either a positive or negative answer to the question may be entirely misconceived by someone who does not understand or has a different understanding of what concrete form of intellectual operation is being denoted. To take one specific example, it would be a mistake to conclude from Michael Oakeshott’s (1962) strictures against “rationalism in politics” that he is commending to us a conception or practice of politics as an unadorned clash of wills-topower or as sheer inertial torpor. Instead, he is seeking in a Burkean vein to discourage us from thinking that a fully explicit...