Book Review: Political Philosophy versus History? Contextualism and Real Politics in Contemporary Political Thought: Jonathan Floyd and Marc Stears, Eds

• Date: 01 August 2013
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591713485377
• Published date: 01 August 2013
• Author: Simone Chambers
• Subject Matter: Books in Review

Political Theory

41(4) 676 –683

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Books in Review

Books in Review

Political Philosophy versus History? Contextualism and Real Politics in Contemporary

Political Thought, edited by Jonathan Floyd and Marc Stears. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Reviewed by: Simone Chambers, University of Toronto

DOI: 10.1177/0090591713485377

This book investigates and weighs the complaint that contemporary political

philosophy is, for the most part, too abstract, ahistorical and moralist.

“History” then is shorthand for another type of political philosophy, one that

is concrete, contextual and realist. Following Bonnie Honig and Marc Stears

in this volume, I call this alternative take on how we should be thinking (it is

still philosophy after all) about politics “new realism.”

Who are the new realists? Raymond Guess, Bernard Williams, Quentin

Skinner, are central figures here but also mentioned are John Dunn, Stuart

Hampshire, Judith Shklar, James Tully, and Alasdair MacIntyre. The poster

child for the abstract, ahistorical, moralist type of political philosophy is John

Rawls with some mention of Jürgen Habermas in a supporting role and scat-

tered references to sundry analytic types like Robert Nozick and Gerry

Cohen. None of these people dead or alive contribute to the book. Rather the

book is a second-order assessment of the claims made by the new realists

against the old moralists. Even contributors to the book who are practitioners

of new realism (here I include Andrew Sabl, Bonnie Honig, and Marc Stears)

spend a great deal of time talking about the intellectual figures who have

helped define this movement. But this is all good. New realism is cutting

edge and it is gaining a growing number of very talented political theorists to

its cause. This book offers an engaging and thought-provoking portrait of the

controversy.

The first part of the collection deals with the challenge posed by contextu-

alism and in the second section the challenge made by realism. Although the

four essays in the first part (Paul Kelly, Jonathan Floyd, Bruce Haddock,

Gordon Graham) are all good, the contextualism challenge as a whole is a bit

murky. The problems begin in the introduction as well as the blurb where the

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