Rationality in Politics and its Limits

The word ?rationality? and its cognates, like ?reason?, have multiple contexts and connotations. Rational calculation can be contrasted with rational interpretation. There is the rationality of proof and of persuasion, of tradition and of the criticism of tradition. Rationalism (and rationalists) can be reasonable or unreasonable. Reason is sometimes distinguished from revelation, superstition, convention, prejudice, emotion, and chance, but all of these also involve reasoning. In politics, three views of rationality ? economic, moral, and historical ? have been especially important, often defining approaches to politics and political theory such as utilitarianism and rational choice theory. These approaches privilege positive or natural law, responsibilities, or human rights, and emphasize the importance of culture and tradition, and therefore meaning and context.

This book explores the understanding of rationality in politics and the relations between different approaches to rationality. Among the topics considered are the limits of rationality, the role of imagination and emotion in politics, the meaning of political realism, the nature of political judgment, and the relationship between theory and practice. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

Introduction: Rationality in politics and its limits1. Political philosophy and the attraction of realismReply - Realism and imagination: a response to Kelly2. Hobbes and human irrationalityReply - Sovereigns and citizens: a response to Field3. Reason, statecraft and the art of war: a politique reassessmentReply - Morality and contingency: a response to Jones4. Thumos and rationality in Plato’s RepublicReply - Argument and imagination: a reply to Tarnopolsky5. ‘A habitual disposition to the good’: on reason, virtue and realismReply - Reason, faith and modernity: a response to Pabst6. Oakeshott on theory and practiceReply - Oakeshott on the theory-practice problem: a reply to Terry Nardin7. Franz Jägerstätter as social criticReply - The social critic and universal morality: a response to FinnRebuttal to Roff

Terry Nardin is Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Law, Morality, and the Relations of States (1983) and The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (2001), and editor of Michael Oakeshott’s Cold War Liberalism (2014).