Abstracts

Sabeen Ahmed (Vanderbilt University): The Epistemic Violence of Jeff McMahan's Revisionist Just War Theory (Section 2., Just War and Realism)

In recent years, the doctrine of just war theory has reclaimed popularity as a means of examining the moral and ontological status of combatants during wartime. Traditional just war theory, particularly as advanced by Michael Walzer in the 1970s, makes a distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello components of warfare; namely, the reasons nations have for waging war and the means by which they carry out their war's ends. Walzer holds that the two are "logically independent," and allowing him to promote the notion of the moral equality of combatants (hereby referred to as "MEC"), which dictates that combatants must be treated as though they have the equal right to kill enemy combatants and are equally legitimate targets of attack. At present, however, a "revisionist approach" to just war theory is gaining influence, due tothe changing nature of warfare, the rise of asymmetric wars, the role of non-state actors therein, and the development of remote combat tactics. Jeff McMahan, in particular, has had considerableinfluence on the philosophical approach to traditional just war theory, principally by contesting the the validity of the MEC.1 In this paper, I analyse McMahan's argument against the moral equality of combatants, and in particular examine the stringent epistemic demands he places on the combatant in order to verify whether she is a "legitimate" or "illegitimate" target of attack.

Further, McMahan's own concession that his book is authored for "citizens of a democratic country such as the US or Britain" (McMahan 2009: 136) allows him to make generalizations about the nature of warfare that paint too binary a picture of the epistemic and moral realities of conflict and oversimplify the practical options available to combatants therein. This is especially evident in the manner in which McMahan takes for granted the scope of epistemic resources and alternatives - what I will collectively call epistemic live options - that the soldier has at her disposal. In so doing, McMahan's theory assumes an objective framework of the ethics of warfare that allows for the demarcation of legitimate and illegitimate targets from an uncritical and privileged Western perspective. Ultimately, I hope to illustrate how my worries concerning McMahan's theory can be applied to a considerable scope of classical and revisionist just war literature, and to contest the genuine use of supplying "a set of principles that have been discovered rather than designed, and that provide an objective account of the morality of war" (McMahan 2012).

Guy Aitchison (European University Institute): Realist disobedience? Protest, coercion and the limits of an appeal to justice (Section 6., Uses of Realism)

Is it justified for political movements to pursue their goals by means of threats, coercion and disruption? The orthodox view in the philosophical literature is that while the use of coercive tactics may be required in circumstances of severe injustice they are not appropriate in democratic states with a broadly egalitarian ethos. The principal role of disobedience, under this perspective, is persuasive: through dramatic acts of principled law-breaking, activists call attention to a particular law or policy and demonstrate that in their considered opinion it is unjust and ought to be reversed. Under this idealist view, civil disobedience is a form of speech addressed to a political majority of voters or law-makers who are convinced to change course not by being cajoled but through the moral persuasiveness of the activists' cause and the strength and sincerity of their conviction. This view is rejected by realists for being overly naive and optimistic given the political constraints movements face in advancing their cause in situations of inequality and injustice. While it is true that movements may restrict their rhetoric to purely moral considerations, any realistic appraisal of their tactics reveals that they invariably have a coercive element to them. In putting their case, realists can point to historical cases of illegal strikes, boycotts, occupations, sabotage, riots and other antagonistic strategies that - at the very least - appear to involve some element of compulsion. Although realists do not deny that disobedience also seeks to bring arguments and reasons into the public sphere, they stress that a movement's political leverage resides not solely in the moral truth of its cause, but in its capacity to impose costs on opponents for their unjust behaviour and pressure them to change course. However, while realists are surely right to caution about the limits of moral reason alone as a force for change, this still leaves a number of important questions unresolved. Specifically, how can the use of force and compulsion be reconciled with the persuasive dimension of disobedience and with a more general commitment to democratic norms? Under what circumstances is the use of coercion justified? What forms of cost is it permissible to impose in pursuit of one's goals and upon whom? What responsibilities do political agents have in using coercive tactics and what ethical and practical considerations ought to inform their actions? In this paper, I set out a framework for thinking about these questions. I first set out what it means to think about disobedience in a way that takes seriously conflict, power, self-interest and other exigencies and processes characteristic of the 'circumstances of politics'. I then argue that in certain contexts the use of coercion by political movements becomes legitimate either as a surrogate tool of political engagement for those who lack formal rights of political participation or the public standing necessary to exercise them effectively or else as a remedial tool of political engagement with which to counteract the distorting effects of power relations on the democratic process.

Zoltán Balázs (Corvinus University of Budapest): The Moral and the Political in the Philosophy of Bernard Williams (Section 8., Rational Choice and Realism)

According to Bernard Williams, political moralism entails that morality is prior to the political. He criticizes this view and proposes political realism as a conception that gives more room for "distinctively political thought." Recent literature has discussed Williams' claims in great detail, yet with little reflection on his moral thinking, although this is arguably the field where his achievements are the most impressive. This paper proposes to link up the moral and the political in Williams' philosophy. The particular question to be addressed is this: If morality is a "peculiar institution" that is not identical with our moral life, does his thesis about morality not being prior to the political mean only this institution's being in need of limitation, or that the political has a distinctively non-moral or amoral status in human life?

Adam Cebula (Warsaw University): Just war theory and the duplex nature of extra-moral absolutism.
(Section 2., Just War and Realism)

A specific argumentative formula used by Polish medieval scholar Paul Vladimiri in one of the crucial passages of his Saevientibus - necessitate imminente ["in case of imminent necessity"] - points out a fundamental tension inherent in just war theory. The tension comes fully into the open in the famous doctrine of supreme emergency, put forward in Professor Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars ("supreme emergency, where one might well be required to override the rights of innocent people and shatter the war convention", Walzer, 1977).

One must remember that according to Professor Walzer the suspension of rules "in the face of an imminent catastrophe" does not affect their absolute character. As he argues, the requirement to override the rights of civilians under some most extraordinary circumstances is ultimately grounded in the idea of supremacy of people's communal obligations - soldiers and statesmen are supposed to be given a special license to break basic mural rules "for the sake of their own political community". Though the author of Just and Unjust Wars stops short of acknowledging what he calls the "transcendence of a communal life", one may reasonably claim that the argument presupposes at least partial adherence to some sort of non-moral (or extra-moral) absolutism, fully parallel and, at certain points, directly contradictory to some basic tenets of moral absolutism (i.e. the ethics of moral absolutes). The occasional clash between those two absolutisms is apparently supposed to give rise to a tragedy-like predicament of a statesman, whose decisions, on the one hand, fulfil the demand of providing adequate protection for his countrymen's unique way of life, but, on the other, make him guilty - in an unabated degree - of committing most intolerable and heinous crimes (such as the strategic bombings of German cities carried out by the Allied forces during the Second World War).

In my paper I will make an attempt to defend the traditional absolutist view on the ethics of war, which commands uncompromised commitment to some clearly defined prohibitions. I will try to do it, in the first place, by demonstrating some seriously disturbing consequences of the so called emergency ethics. I will also argue that making any concessions - however finely delimited - with regard to the universal validity (applicability) of some absolute negative norms may, paradoxically, lead to an unjustifiable and potentially subversive expansion of claims concerning the scope of individual entitlements, in particular the rights of non-combatant citizens of aggressive states in war/post-war circumstances.

Stephen Hailey (Cambridge University): Aristotle and political 'realism' (Section 3,. History and Realism)

Contemporary proponents of 'realism' in political theory often trace their lineage back to Hobbes, but arguably it was the classical author of whom Hobbes remains the outstanding English translator, Thucydides, who is its true progenitor.1 But if 'realism' thus has its origins in the fifth century BC, its most serious opponent, 'moralism', would seem to have come properly into being only in the subsequent generation, with the dialogues of Plato.2 Arguably, it is also in Plato that one finds the origins of philosophical 'utopianism' (the impulse to which is typically thought to be opposed to 'realism', but need not be).3 Plato's Καλλίπολις, the 'Beautiful City' depicted in the Republic, is at any rate certainly the first great utopia in western thought. Yet one figure who is too often left out of these discussions is Aristotle, who as it happens is both the first philosophical critic of utopianism (Politics II. 1-6), and a theoretician who, despite his ambition to develop 'political science' (ἡ πολιτικὴ ἐπιστήμη) on a sound empirical basis (i.e. 'realistically'), also retained Plato's uncompromising insistence on the intrinsic beauty of virtue, and in fact assigned to it a necessary place in any political community that hoped to realize its (as he thought) natural function of providing for the good life, which he understood as the life of citizenly virtue and philosophical contemplation. That is, not only is it the case for Aristotle that virtuous actions are performed τοῦ καλοῦ ἕνεκα ('for the sake of beauty'), but it is also the case that the best or 'most beautiful' (καλλιστή) city becomes in effect a theatre of virtue, that is, a setting in which the virtues conspicuously flourish and occasion great pleasure to the citizens who are thus able to contemplate them, like spectators at a drama.4 This reading of Aristotle brings him closest among modern authors perhaps to Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, and thus to the eighteenth-century strand of moral and political theorizing that included Leibniz, Hutcheson, Rousseau, and Schiller, among others, and was centered on the notion of the beautiful soul, but is now all but forgotten.5 Part of the original motivation for this line of thought, notably, was to oppose the doctrines of Hobbes, precisely on the grounds that his picture of the state of nature was fanciful (i.e. 'unrealistic') - so Shaftesbury alleges. At any rate, with these ancient and modern points of comparison in mind, I shall try to determine in what ways it might (or might not) make sense to regard Aristotle as a meaningful contributor to the 'realist' tradition of political thought.

Nicole Hassoun (Cornell University): Against Realism in Political Philosophy: The Virtue of Creative Resolve (Section 7., Virtues and Realism)

This paper argues against realism in political philosophy by defending what I call the virtue of creative resolve -- the fundamental commitment to finding creative solutions to what appear to be impossible problems. Where, more formally, creative resolve is an attitude that inclines an agent to: 1) question claims and evidence that a moral requirement's demands cannot be met; 2) assess such claims and evidence with an awareness of the burdens of judgment and biases which sometimes lend irrational support to them; 3) search for new information and seek out creative ways of fulfilling the demands moral imperatives generate; 4) refuse to treat lack of sufficient evidence for the possibility of meeting the demands as a ground for denying the possibility of meeting them; and, 5) barring sufficient evidence that moral imperatives' demands cannot be met, act to fulfill them insofar as possible. Creative resolve helps prevent impermissible failures of moral imagination.

Creative resolve is diametrically opposed to conservativism (with a small 'c'). As Michael Okenshott puts it, "to be conservative... is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer... the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss" (Oakeshott, 1962, 78). Rather than striving for the best possible results, whatever those may be in the domain of inquiry, conservatives are realistic and even embrace the status quo. They often do this because they think that existing structures and institutions have proven themselves.

And, indeed, sometimes avoiding apparent terrible dilemmas is too difficult or impossible. There will be times when the costs of looking for acceptable ways of avoiding moral failure exceed the costs of making a terrible choice. An acceptable alternative may not exist.

Still, there is at least a prima facie obligation to do what we can to fulfill moral imperatives' claims and avoid making tragic choices, even if avoiding them is very difficult, very demanding. As Kant put it:

It does not matter how many doubts may be raised against my hopes from history, which, if they were proved, could move me to desist from a task so apparently futile; as long as these doubts cannot be made quite certain I cannot exchange the duty for the rule of prudence not to attempt the impracticable (Kant, 1793, 8:309).

Even when is not clear how to fulfill all potentially competing moral claims, we have reason to try to find ways of doing so.

Ferenc Hörcher (Institute of Philosophy, HAS): How to Govern a City - Political Realism in a Conservative, Republican Key (Section 4., Conservativism and Realism)

Political realism as a political theory is generally understood to offer a criticism of the normativism of political philosophies, based as they might be on no matter what divergent theoretical grounds. This paper starts out from the assumption that the real merit and novelty of this approach is that it can lead our thinking back to the actual practice of politics, as experienced in real life situations - by city magistrates in historical Europe. This last point has two important implications:

(1.) a claim that politics (including its normative dimension) is best understood when analysed in non-emergency action (as opposed to both abstract philosophical thought experiments and emergency situations), and

(2.) a claim that politics (including its normative dimension) is best understood when practised in the context of a middle scale political community: on the level of the European historical town (as opposed to the practice of running a territorial state, an empire or a global venture).

These claims can be seen as criticisms of how political philosophy came to be exercised in the 19th and 20th centuries, in their close connection with the political practises based on them - often in authoritarian or totalitarian regimes.

In order to balance the pitfalls of this late modern totalitarian tendencies the present paper argues that political philosophy based on political realism need to get a closer look at the level of the city, and give a reflective account of the theoretical conclusions such practises arrived at. In particular, it wants to reintroduce some of the assumptions behind the practices of city magistrates, as they were collected and presented by two early modern practitioner-theorists: Johannes Althusius, a syndic of Emden in early 17th century Germany, and Justus Möser, a syndic for the Ritterschaft in late 18th century Osnabrück.

Gábor Illés (Centra for Social Sciences, HAS): Action in realist political theory: character and political virtues instead of "dirty hands" (Section 7., Virtues and Realism)

If a contemporary political realist maintains that political theory should contribute something to the evaluation of political actions, she finds herself at the problem of appropriate standards. If she chooses deontological standards, her approach can easily fall back into some kind of "political moralism" (Bernard Williams) or "ethics-first view" (Raymond Geuss), which uses extrapolitical standards to constrain political action, and thereby effectively eradicates the autonomy of politics - one of the cornerstones of realist political theory. On the other hand, following Machiavelli's consequentionalist remark "let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody" could open up the doors to violence and political adventurers.

From the viewpoint of political actors, Michael Walzer famously called this impasse between consequentionalist and deontological considerations the "problem of dirty hands". While he tried to offer a solution based on something like the Catholic confession, both his way of posing the problem and his solution remains highly debated along several lines. One prominent and current strand among Walzer's critics are those approaches which bring virtue ethics into play as a better ground to conceptualize and evaluate political conduct. This sort of critique has been articulated in the broader literature on political ethics (most recently e.g. by Berry Tholen and Demetris Tillyris), as well as in the narrower field of contemporary realist political theory (most notably by Mark Philp, Andrew Sabl, and William Galston). These approaches claim that instead of combining the consequentialist and deontologist viewpoint, shifting the perspective this way could not only evade some theoretical shortcomings of Walzer's argument, but also dedramatize the "dirty hands" view on political action, and at the same time preserve the autonomy of politics that is so important to political realism.

My paper tries to review these virtue-ethical approaches and their Williamsian origins, and investigate their contributions to a realist conceptualization and evaluation of political action. More specifically, I will address the following interconnected problems: in which sense do they dedramatize the Walzerian picture of political action and political actors; how do they view the moral dilemmas that politicians face; and to what extent can the Williamsian focus on character and integrity soften the "hyperrealistic" view that politicians should get used to the dirt on their hands, while at the same time present alternatives to some possibly problematic points of the Walzerian model (e.g. to the oscillation from a value-pluralist to a value-monist perspective, and to the role of guilt).

Dóra Kis-Jakab (Institute of Philosophy, HAS / ELTE University): Thomas Aquinas' approach to the best government of human communities (Section 7., Virtues and Realism)

Thomas Aquinas' theory of the best government is a puzzling segment of his political thought. There is an apparent contradiction in the passages dealing with the issue of best human government, a difficulty that has challenged scholars and generated diverse interpretations. The reason for this confusion is Aquinas' omission to make clear that he actually identifies two different types of government as the best ones in different passages. He both refers to political monarchy (elsewhere mentioned as mixed government) and maintains that it is the best for actual human communities and to regal monarchy, the best normatively. In the presentation I propose to argue that Thomas consistently supported mixed government as the best political constitution (the best government for actual human communities) and that mixed government for Thomas is the same as political monarchy. The other form of government, regal monarchy, is a constitutional form where there is one head of the community who wields unlimited power. Aquinas argues that ideally this is the best type of government, but only if the ruler is completely virtuous like God who governs the universe in regal monarchy. Otherwise, the danger of tyranny, the very worst of governments, is too great. Since, according to our experiences, there are no wholly virtuous rulers, regal monarchy cannot be the best for human communities.Thomas is aware of the reality that an unchecked human ruler is prone to misuse his authority and that the results can be disastrous. Thus, he emphasizes that the king's power must be tempered and he suggests constitutional limitations to ensure this. Accordingly, I argue that Aquinas, being aware of the inherent dangers of kingship with full power, realistically proposes political monarchy or mixed government as the best for actual human communities.

Tibor Mándi (Institute for Political Science, HAS): The morality of political realism
(Section 1., Morality and Realism)

The paper starts from a critique of the concept of "political moralism," as used by exponents of the realist school of political theory. It argues that the realist critique of political moralism is vulnerable on several points. First, the picture of political moralism emerging from the writings of political realists is highly disputable, as it ascribes a kind of absolute morality to political moralists which they do not necessarily exhibit (a particularly striking example would be Max Weber citing the Sermon on the Mount as a statement of the kind of morality that, in his view, is incompatible with the practice of politics in his famous essay "Politics as a Vocation"). Second, it can be shown that the realists' concept of the political also contains recognizable, and, it seems, unavoidable, moralistic elements (one influential example would be Bernard Williams' Basic Legitimation Demand, the possibly moralistic character of which he himself tacitly acknowledges; another Raymond Geuss' admission of a certain - according to him, "anodyne" - form, or reading of morality as a basic influence on political action, without which it cannot be fully understood). Based on these considerations - and contrary to the stated intentions of most realist theorists - the paper will try to interpret political realism as a distinct form of moral philosophy, offering a specific kind of political, or public morality, while taking into account characteristics of the political, as well as the moral life that other approaches often neglect. (Something resembling this view can be found e.g. in Thomas Nagel's essay, "Ruthlessness in Public Life", also in Weber's "Politics as a Vocation", and, in contemporary literature, in Hans-Jörg Sigwart's "The Logic of Legitimacy - Ethics in Political Realism"). Thus, political realism would represent, at the very least, a much needed corrective to mainstream liberal political theory, and perhaps even a useful method of studying morality - public, or private - itself.

Dávid Molnár (University of Pécs): State/ sovereignty/ State sovereignty. Political thought in Edward Forsett's A Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politique (Section 3,. History and Realism)

"In the year 1606 Edward Forsett published his quite curious book, under the title, A Comparative Discourse of the Bodies Natural and Politique. The treatise was written immediately after the infamous Gunpowder's Plot and Forsett was involved in its prosecution. The writer was a landowner, a justice of peace and a surveyor in the Office of Works. His book is an example of the glorification of the idea of State sovereignty, and thus requires more attention in the shadow of the works of Hobbes and Bodin. In addition his work is one of the few published before 1642 that give us something like the theory of State as distinct from a theory of government.

Most of his work is preoccupied with the analogy between bodies natural and politic. In European political theory, starting with the 12th century, with John of Salisbury and his famous treatise Policraticus, one can notice the emergence of a political metaphor consisting in drawing an analogy between the medieval state and the human body. Furthermore the medieval and early modern mind was dominated by the idea that man was a microcosm which faithfully mirrored, on a lesser scale, the universal macrocosm. That was the basis for the analogy between the human body and the state and it was openly acknowledged by writers, such as Forsett or the more famous James I, king of England and Scotland. In addition Forsett described the sovereign as both human and mystical, rehearsing directly the theory of the king's two bodies.

Forsett himself called his book both political philosophy and political science, yet along with political philosophers he cited poets, painters, etc. He also alludes the contemporary events and issues like the Gunpowder's Plot and the political philosophy of James I., supporting the king's pronouncements on the divine right of kings - the sovereign head of the state is always designed, inspired, depending and protected above in Forsett's work. He incorporated in his book the ideas of the humours and the affections, religious, legal, and medical theories, suggesting that in early modern thinking all these writings on the body should be considered political philisophy."

Blair Peruniak (Oxford University): Republicanism and Refugees
(Section 6., Uses of Realism)

In this paper I argue that the concept of freedom has played an important but under appreciated role in defining historical and contemporary realist debates about freedom of movement and the ethics and politics of asylum. By downplaying or ignoring the idea of freedom as a historically contested concept contemporary discussions of political asylum have worked to both reinforce liberal realist debates between proponents and critics of open border policies and to undermine the relevance of republican political theory to contemporary debates on immigration and asylum. The paper is divided into two parts. In part one I argue that responses to refugees in Late and Early Modern Europe were shaped by debates between rival accounts of freedom that were importantly related to, and implicated in, competing accounts of freedom of movement. The rise of prominent British Utilitarian conceptions of liberty as non-interference under the influence of figures such as Jeremy Bentham and William Paley had particularly important implications for emerging immigration reforms and state responses to political and religious persecution. In part two I argue that forced migration scholars have not only failed to acknowledge that freedom is a historically contested concept. They have also failed to adequately distinguish between competing conceptions of freedom in their accounts of asylum. As a result, the value of political asylum-as freedom from political persecution in the form of refugee status-remains both highly ambiguous and overly dependent on realist debates in migration between proponents of liberal conceptions of negative and positive freedom of movement. While proponents of (limited) border controls increasingly favour a conception of positive freedom that sees political asylum as means to freedom that is conditional on the attainment of citizenship or quasi-citizenship status in the refugee-receiving state, proponents of open borders have tended to take the (classic liberal) conception of freedom as non-interference as the proper ideal of freedom of movement which suggests that the practice of political asylum is necessarily an affront and an obstacle to liberty. I argue that neither of these conceptions is adequate. Although political asylum is better understood in terms of negative freedom, I distinguish between two types of negative freedom-the liberal conception of freedom as non-interference and the republican conception of freedom as non-domination-and opt for the latter as the supreme political ideal by which states may identify and fulfil their obligations to refugees. As a whole, the paper counsels caution: scholars of forced migration should understand both historical and contemporary references to the language and concept of freedom less as historical markers or references to a common value than as indications or sites of controversy and political and moral disagreement. The implications of this cautionary tale are nonetheless significant. In acknowledging the rhetorical force and deeply contested nature of freedom in Modern and Early Modern accounts of the movement of peoples we can avoid the controversial idea that historical and contemporary responses to forced migration are necessarily responses to a single, enduring problem and better acknowledge the different ways displaced persons may have viewed their own moral and political conditions. Furthermore, historical responses to refugees may yet serve as a starting point for investigating competing political ideals of modern asylum practices, of which there are liberal and republican variants.

Matthew Rendall (University of Nottingham): Realism and Rational Choice  (Section 8., Rational Choice and Realism)

A central theme of realist thought is that even if were human beings rational and fully informed, agreement would often be thwarted by conflicts of interest. Were all ignorance and superstition to be overcome, human relations would still be marked, Reinhold Niebuhr claimed, by "the brutal character of the behavior of all human collectives, and the power of self-interest and collective egoism in all intergroup relations." Nor can institutions overcome these gloomy facts. The belief "that the power element and its evilness are particularly attached to certain actions, situations, and institutions," Hans Morgenthau maintained, is an illusion: "Social problems....do not grow out of temporary limitations of knowledge or temporary insufficiencies of technical achievement....They are the result of those conflicts in which the selfishness and the lust for power, which are common to all men, involve all men."

I will argue that such claims fail. The reason is simple: in a representative democracy, the logic of collective action makes it irrational to vote egoistically. The optimal strategy for a self-interested citizen, many writers have argued, is skip voting and free ride off of the efforts of others. Some maintain that voters signal their trustworthiness to others by voting. That might give a rational egoist reason to go to the polls. But given her microscopic chance of deciding the election, she will maximize her expected utility by walking straight out again.

That does not render all voting irrational. If one seeks to promote the public good, then even a tiny chance of tipping the election makes it a good bet given the enormous stakes. Moreover, voting can often be justified on rule consequentialist grounds. But since one stands next to no chance of being pivotal, there is no incentive for anyone even slightly moral not to vote her conscience. This logic, Robert Goodin and Kevin Roberts observe, "is best summarized as Niebuhr's slogan set on its head: immoral men, moral society."

Even if people are predominantly egoistic, a representative democracy whose voters were ideally rational and understood the relevant facts, and that faithfully translated their preferences, would pursue thoroughly ethical policies. If voters endorse egoistic policies, then they must be ignorant or confused. If governments pursue policies in spite of the voters, then democracy is not working as it is supposedly designed to do.

Realists might grant these points. Since Thucydides and Hobbes, realism has stressed the limits to human reason. Much of the problem, in Niebuhr's and Morgenthau's view, lies in moral parochialism. Does it really matter why states behave badly?

I believe it does. Part of what makes realism seem compelling is the notion that it acknowledges the hard fact of rational egoism. Yet if states behave badly, the problem does lie in ideas and institutions-and these could, in principle, be reformed. It may be that in reality either or both are incorrigible. But then, those are the hard facts on which realists must build their case, not the selfishness of human nature.

Enzo Rossi (University of Ansterdam): Being Realistic and Demanding the Impossible (Section 5., Phases of Realism)

Characterising political realism by contrasting it with moralism leaves open several questions to do with realism's practical import. If political judgment is not to be derived-exclusively or at all-from pre-political moral commitments, what scope is there for genuinely normative political thinking? And even if there is some scope for political normativity, does realism's reliance on interpretations of political practices condemn it to some form of status quo bias? In this paper I address those questions from a part-theoretical and part-historical point of view. My main aim is to assuage some worries about realism's alleged conservative tendencies. I will argue that there is an important sense in which realists can maintain their fidelity to the facts of politics while supporting radical and even unachievable political change-one can be realistic and demand the impossible, as the soixante-huitard slogan goes. To see how that may be the case one needs to characterise realism by contrasting it with both non-ideal theory and utopianism. In a nutshell, realism differs from non-ideal theory because it need not be concerned with feasibility constraints, and it differs from utopianism because it eschews detailed, technocratic blueprints of the perfect polity. I establish this theoretical point by identifying three streams within the realist tradition: Hobbesian, Machiavellian, and Critical-Theoretic. I show that each stream is centred on fidelity to a different set of facts about real politics, and that in turn affords the realist tradition a wider-than-commonly-acknowledged set of options as regards the span of the political imagination.

Nat Rutherford (University of London): Is realism inherently conservative? On the possibility of radical realism (Section 4., Conservativism and Realism)

One of the problems for theorists who are attracted to realism as a mode of theorizing is its apparent tendency towards conservatism. The worry here is that when a realist theory, which insists on a bottom-up approach to theorizing, specifies first-order commitments, these commitments are bound to reflect existing injustices. Realism's rejection of 'ethics-first' approaches denies realist theorists the necessary normative resources to advance progressive principles. In attempting to offer a corrective to the perceived idealism or 'moralism' of liberal theory, realism is charged with shifting to the other extreme. Its critics suggest that the realist's desire to invert the primacy of legitimacy and justice and the more indeterminate desire to 'take the world as it is, rather than as it should be' has led realists to merely justify the status quo. In squeezing the space in which theorists can operate, the role of normativity is subsumed by assessments of the present, marking a departure from how the task of political theory has traditionally been conceived. This criticism, I argue, is well-founded, but contend that political realism, in its broadest sense, need not be inherently conservative. Further, I suggest that realism, viewed as the antithesis of utopianism, offers the only possible approach in which radical change can truly be envisaged. Using Marx as an exemplar of this approach, I argue that only a frank assessment of the limitations and conditions of the present can provide the starting point for radical social change. Most important of these limitations is the restriction on political radicalism imposed by the moral pluralism that characterises democratic societies. This pluralism, I argue, gives rise to the circumstances of politics in which theorists operate. I conclude that rather than being inherently conservative, a realist approach supplies theorists with the necessary tools to respond to the political conditions of the present in order uncover the conditions of a realistic utopia.

Gulsen Seven (Bilkent University): Political Realism and A Theory of Good Reasons (Section 6., Uses of Realism)

Most political theorists agree that the key task of political theory is providing guidance to collective human action. The main question they quarrel over is "In what capacity and to what extent can political theory be politically informative and guide human actions within the political domain so that our individual and collective actions generate better outcomes?" Moralism encompasses theoretical positionspremised on the assumption that it is, in principle, possible to fashion ourselves, as human agents, and the world we live in, through a model of what ideally 'ought' to be the case. What 'ought' to be the case can be discovered by appeal to the supposedly autonomous field of 'ethics' containing 'pure' ethical precepts allegedly unsullied by the vagaries of historical reality.

Realism, in contrast, starts with the recognition that any attempt to provide guidance to human beings must take them as historically located agents in their historically contingent circumstances. This entails recognizing that the desires, beliefs, values, motivations and interests people hold as well as the institutional structures through which they must act to realize these vary historically. Any realist theoretical construct aiming to guide human actions must reflect and respond to this dynamism and historical variation. The first step towards this is acknowledging the stark truth that there are no grand recipes for guiding human actions within the political domain. All there is, is historical individuals creating historical realit(ies) through their actions at all times.

Although there might not be grand, once and for all solutions to political problems and hence, a single, clearly specifiable guide to human action within the political domain, there are many things that can be done at any given time, place and conditions to secure better outcomes, or, at least, prevent worst ones. Political theory can help us in this regard by bringing together and relating insights of three increasingly disjointedly treated fields - history, ethics and practice - the first to tell us how we have reached our present situation, the second to show us what we should value and the third to designate what sort of politics we require. The first two fields clearly exhibit the dual character of politics: that it is both a realm of human judgement and action responsive to human purposes and desires, and a field that is highly structured by what appears to be more ossified causal processes. A theory that is capable of providing practical political guidance, a theory of good reasons as I call it in this paper, is one that is concerned with analyzing what humans have good reason to value and do (morality - what ought we do), within the circumstances in which they happen to find themselves (history/politics - what is). It is a theory that attempts to specify the conditions for arriving at better political judgments in relation to the question of 'What is to be done?' in full cognizance of the fact that there are no solutions in politics.

Sarah Shin (University of Maryland): Modernizing Just War Theory - A Response to Terrorism in International Law and Political Theory (Section 2., Just War and Realism)

With the evolution of warfare in the modern period, armed conflict has often taken an amorphous form in which it is difficult if not impossible to label a specific group as an "enemy," raising serious challenges to the tradition of just war theory in political philosophy. One of the most amorphous such forms is terrorism, in response to which implementing a just war theory has begun to sound ludicrous because of terrorists' status as "battle nomads," or people who will not reciprocate the same code of ethics. The hypocrisy that arises for a country to proclaim the sacredness of life while ignoring the lives of innocent civilians living in a target area suggests, however, the conclusion that just war theory should not be eradicated in the battle against terrorism, but rather revised to better adjust to the emerging modernized world of warfare. This paper will offer a critique of contemporary just war theory before offering an outline of criteria a modernized just war theory should meet in order to effectively prevent the death of innocents while allowing for an effective battle against terrorism to occur. The first proposed principle that a modernized just war theory has to implement must address the problem of probability of success. Since terrorism is a fight that requires the effort of all nations to succeed, a modernized just war theory should incorporate a principle that states that a nation must be willing to enter a war or any form of armed conflict without thinking of consequences if the cause of the war appeals for the greater good for the greater number of people. The second principle a modernized just war theory must embrace addresses the problem of racial discrimination in warfare. Especially in racially diverse countries like the United States, this principle is essential to eliminate any unnecessary deaths of people of a certain race. The third principle concerns the aftermath of war. This principle prohibits the leaving of combatants until a certain degree of stability is reinstated in the nation in which the war took place in. Soldiers may only leave the area once a stable government has been put into place. The final principle modernized just war theory must incorporate has to do with the advance in technological advancements in warfare. This principle will ensure that lethal weapons of a certain capability of mass destruction be absolutely forbidden in warfare, as they cause an unacceptable amount of deaths. This includes nuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs, and more weapons that would ensue more harm than good in terms of the number of civilian casualties. These principles will allow for just war theory to adapt to the demands of contemporary armed conflict, thus extending its utility into the coming decades.

Matt Sleat (Sheffield University): Ethics, Morality and the Case for Realist Political Theory (Section 1. Morality and Realism)

It is by now something of a platitude to remark that political realists resist the thought that political theory can be a form of applied moral philosophy and in so doing have the general ambition of preserving some autonomy for distinctively political thinking. However, while all those who have recently been involved in the renewed interest in some kind of realist political theorising share this commitment, it is not adequately acknowledged that their reasons for doing so vary. In this paper we argue that the fact that realists have come to political realism via different intellectual routes is deeply significant but is frequently overlooked both by some of realism's defenders but also by its many critics. While much realism seeks to disaggregate politics from morality, there is one possible impulse to realism that comes more directly via moral philosophy and which is grounded in a related set of critiques of contemporary moral philosophy which then feed into a series of political positions that are recognisably realist. It is distinctive of this motivation to endorse political realism that it depends upon certain substantive attitudes and concerns within moral philosophy, or maybe more precisely attitudes towards moral philosophy from the perspective of the ethical more broadly conceived. On this impulse, political realism is profoundly driven by a set of philosophical concerns about the nature of ethics and the place of ethical thinking in our lives. This is precisely the impulse that motivated both Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss, the two most influential thinkers in contemporary realism, to versions of distinctively realist political thought. We think this is important to emphasise now as confusion about what realism is for - why we need realist political thought - is to a large extent responsible for the frequent misunderstanding that realism hankers for a political theory that eschews all ethical content. The impulse to realism that we wish to highlight here points rather to the fact that it grew out of specifically ethical concerns, and in particular the attempt to think philosophically about politics from a particular ethical standpoint. Realism on this reading or approach does not set politics against ethics per se; realism is rather an attempt to philosophise about politics without relying on understandings of morality which we have little reason to endorse.

Adam Smrcz (Institute of Philosophy, HAS / ELTE University): What renders a conflict inevitable? The question of bellum necessarium among early modern natural law theorists (Section 3,. History and Realism)

The bellum necessarium was mostly regarded as an instance of just wars [belum iustum] among early modern theorists, since - according to them - conflict, in some cases, is not only a legitimate response to an action, but one of necessity as well. Although a bellum necessarium is not driven by any sort of metaphysical necessity, still certain events can render conflicts inevitable, which is due to our innate anthropological dispositions.

Obviously, a just war requires an unjust action as its neccessary condition, still the latter would not make it necessary for the former to materiailze by itself. An unjust action can, hence, be regarded as only a necessary, but not as a sufficient condition of any conflict. Therefore, if one is unwilling to regard events as merely contingent ones, anthropology can, in some cases, provide him with sufficient grounds to regard seemingly contingent events as ones which were necessitated by a certain cause, inherent in human nature.

What sort of events are these? Early modern natural law theorists (e.g. the representatives of the Salamanca school or even more famously the Italian jurist, Alberico Gentili) discussed these at length. According to them, if the life of an individual or the existence of a community is in danger for instance, conflict will be inevitable between them and those who own the necessary means for their survival.

Hence, if survival is at stake, warfare will be just and inevitable between the parties. But this raises the question of what can be regarded as a direct or indirect threat to one's existence. Can - for instance - regulations on free trade be considered such a threat, that they would result in a bellum necessarium?

Although it was Francisco de Vitoria, the hispanic theorist of natural law, who subjected the legitimacy of free trade to careful observation for the first time in history, traditionally Hugo Grotius' treatise, Mare Liberum is regarded as the first comprehensive analysis of the question. Famously, the Grotian argumentation is based on two assumptions, both of which are necessary conditions of property ownership: (1.) the acquisition of a certain thing [occupatio] (2.) its continuous ownership. Since - according to Grotius - only the first condition is met in the case of the seas, no people or nation can claim true ownership over them. Yet, if anyone attempted to do so, that could entail the proclamation of a just war [bellum iustum] from any side who suffered any kind of detriment caused by that action.

However, Grotius does not clarify whether such a legitimate possibility of a just war would or would not postulate an inevitable war [bellum necessarium], still, he seems to approach this problem, when he sais, that in case of necessity private ownership of things can be suspended. Since the law of nations has to be established on the grounds of natural law, and natural law itself has to mirror the necessary dispositions of human nature, such anthropological considerations like Gentili's can not be neglected.

Hence, in my talk, I intend to investigate the question of the possible scope any indirect threat, and - more particularly - whether limitations of free trade may result in inevitable conflicts.

Andrija Šoć (Belgrade University):Deliberative Democracy between Moralism and Realism
(Section 1., Morality and Realism)

The topic in this paper is guided by the question of how realistic our theorizing of politics needs to be (Sleat 2016) and Sleat's realist (Sleat 2014, Sleat 2016) claim that 'the more facts one incorporates, the more realisticthe theory will be'. The main claim of realists is that a political theory has to be actionable. It has to guide us and be able to specify concrete political action as means of positive change. According to realists, moralism cannot do that. Contrary to that notion, I will try to show that we can have an operational political approach that draws from main tenets of moralism.

In the first part of the paper, I criticize Sleat's realist claim. By insisting on the significance of the volume of facts one theory incorporates, Sleat neglects one particular problem. Namely, it is not at all self-evident that any amount of facts about political realities in a society suggests by itself what kind of action we ought to take, or even that we ought to take it. Put simply, why would a description of how things are like in a society enable us to enact positive change? If we are to decide on implementing certain actions, we need to know why, or what for we are doing it. In other words, a political theory has to be built upon values or standards which one tries to implement in aiming to formulate political actions.

In the second part of the paper, I aim to expand Sleat's dichotomy that juxtaposes realism with moralism and idealism/non-idealism. I will claim that it misses the significance of the deliberative approach to politics. The crucial distinction between liberal and deliberative democracy concerns preferences. Whereas the former views preference ordering as fixed, the latter sees it as flexible. Because of that, a deliberative approach aims to develop means by which preference ordering of citizens can potentially be changed. However, as Laslett suggests, implementing a genuinely effective deliberative process that would serve as an appropriate arena for discussion and lead toward genuine transformative moments seems utopian. Following Sleat's distinction, it would appear that the deliberative approach is not operational and that it cannot serve as any guide for political action. However, if we take into account the empirical (experimental) aspect of deliberation, it turns out that such appearance is misleading.

In the third part of the paper, I outline a view of deliberative democracy that encapsulates the most attractive features of realism and moralism. Like political realism, it holds disagreement and conflict as constitutive of politics. Like moralism, it can be more than merely descriptive. Deliberation aims to (at least partially) resolve the conflict, but it needen't strive for consensus. Furthermore, it takes into account the minority view, which is crucial for establishing the democratic legitimacy. Finally, as I will try to show, it strives to raise the quality of deliberation and empathy for the opposing views, and it tries to perfect it by accepting as constitutive its empirical and experimental aspects.

Gábor Zoltán Szűcs (Institute for Political Sciences, HAS): Three models of realist anti-moralism
(Section 5., Phases of Realism)

It is a widespread assumption that anti-moralism lies at the core of contemporary realism (while other interpretations emphasize its anti-utopianism or regard it as a loose mixture of ideas), and it is exactly what the opponents of realism see as a complete misunderstanding of the complex relationship between moral and political standards on the part of realists. How on earth, they ask, can we go beyond a mere "might is right" view of politics if we are not willing to accept the fact that politics must be justified by moral principles at least on the long run? Fortunately, realist anti-moralism is not so liable to this objection as it might seem at first glance. But to understand this, we need to realize that contemporary realist anti-moralism is not a single doctrine, but a series of criticisms raised against various views on the relationship between moral and political standards. We can even trace the origins of these different strands of anti-moralism back to the classics of realism and label them as the "Machiavellian", the "Hobbesian", and the "Aristotelian" models of separating political from moral standards. The first one focuses on the discrepancy between moral and political standards and asserts that what is right in politics is sometimes wrong morally. The second one emphasizes the impossibility of a consensual morality under the circumstances of the irreducible heterogeneity of human societies and attributes the role of arbiter over conflicting material and moral claims to political authority. And the third one defines the task of politics as seeking compromise between universal and particular demands. Hobbesian and Machiavellian models are obviously way more popular amongst realists. For example, Bernard Williams, Raymond Geuss or John Gray has sought answers to questions coming from the Hobbesian model; Richard Bellamy or Mark Philp use Machiavellian terms to speak about political conduct. However, the third model has its proponents too. Just to mention one example, Andrew Sabl's Ruling passion is an eloquent vindication of a non-Hobbesian and non-Machiavellian understanding of the specific standards of politics. Why is so important to differentiate between these three models? First of all, because neither of these models raises the same criticism against moralism, thus they cannot be repelled by the same counter-argument. Secondly, each model has a specific criticism against moralism, but neither of them denies the importance of morality in politics. In order to refute the claims of realism for autonomy of politics, it is just not enough to assert that every politics must have some kind of moral foundation. Thirdly, each model has its theoretical limitations, but also each has some important insight. Rather than by refuting anti-moralism altogether, we can understand politics better if we learn both from the insights and the limitations of the three different models of realist anti-moralism.

Carla Yumatle (Brown University): No Domination, No Politics: The Failings of Normative Political Theory (Section 5., Phases of Realism)

The paper focuses on the centrality and unavoidability of domination in politics. I view domination in a Weberian light as the probability that certain specific commands will be obeyed by a given group of persons. In this sense, domination is not a wrong that needs to be brushed aside but a definitional and ineliminable aspect of politics. That is, absent domination, there is no political relationship. Morality, friendship, aesthetics may all be bonds that require the absence of domination, but politics is constituted by it. Domination involves a tense interaction between power and authority and it cannot be reduced to coercion only. Instead, it is the exercise of coercive and non-coercive power normatively justified. Domination entails a productive, structural form of power that establishes the language of politics. The political-conceived as the capacity of any citizen to confront and redraw the boundaries of social inclusion-is played out always and necessarily against a background of domination. Against this view, normative political theory (liberal, republican, communitarian and libertarian) understands domination as, broadly speaking, the subjection to another's power of uncontrolled interference (Pettit 2012). Domination, in this sense, involves a threat to one's will, alludes only to the coercive aspects of power and law, and constitutes a phenomenon in politics that one wants to eliminate. The relation of political obedience to the law, however, is not exhausted by dynamics of coercion. On the contrary, the ideas of consent and resistance are informed by our disposition towards the normative, non-coercive basis of authority and its coercive use. It is this relation of domination that provides us the terms of both consent and resistance to the law. The uneasy relation between power and authority that domination entails affects the way we can account for a legitimate order. Normative political theory overemphasizes the role of either rational consent, agreement, control, or autonomous will in obtaining a relation of political obedience based on freedom. The domination view, alternatively, conceives the relation of political obedience as an agreement that sets limits to the law but at the same time is constrained by the normative language that domination presupposes. Liberalism, as any other ideology of domination (as defined here), is both a constraining and a liberating form of political rationality. It affords the terms for conformity and limitation of the law and it serves as the normative language on which domination creates permissible subjectivities in relation to political authority.