The Background to Politics in an Age of Pluralism and Polarization by Aaron Berwick Roberts

764 Pages·2015·2.43 MB·English

The Background to Politics in an Age of Pluralism and Polarization
by
Aaron Berwick Roberts
Department of Political Science
Duke University

Date:_______________________
Approved:

___________________________
Michael A. Gillespie, Supervisor

___________________________
Ruth W. Grant

___________________________
Michael C. Munger

___________________________
Thomas A. Spragens

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy in the Department of
Political Science in the Graduate School
of Duke University

2015
ABSTRACT
The Background to Politics in an Age of Pluralism and Polarization
by
Aaron Berwick Roberts
Department of Political Science
Duke University

Date:_______________________
Approved:

___________________________
Michael A. Gillespie, Supervisor

___________________________
Ruth W. Grant

___________________________
Michael C. Munger

___________________________
Thomas A. Spragens

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of
Political Science in the Graduate School of
Duke University

2015
Copyright by
Aaron Berwick Roberts
2015
Abstract
A diverse variety of liberal thinkers agree that the peace, order, stability, and well-being of
government and society rest upon a fundamental bedrock of shared opinion, sentiment,
sympathies, meanings, understandings, beliefs, etc. They appear largely correct in making this
supposition, for the requirement is built into the very logic of liberal democratic thinking. And
yet, the very plausibility of such a shared political background has come into question particularly
acutely for the present generation, and, in large part, as a result of the twin forces of pluralism and
polarization.
The two central questions engaged by this study are: (a) is it still conceptually plausible to
presuppose such a background, and if so, (b) under what terms does it make sense; in what way
should this background be understood?
This study tackles this set of questions by means of a critical analysis of select and especially
prominent, representative intellectual schools of the twentieth century, for which the theme of
pluralism is meaningfully central: (a) John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas (as exemplars of the
political liberal project), (b) Michel Foucault and contemporary North American neo-
Foucauldians (of the discourse of difference), and (c) Carl Schmitt (of the reactionary politics of
meaning). The three Parts of the study are dedicated to these three schools.
The guiding hypothesis of the study is the contention that political order is always already
premised upon a shared political Leitkultur (guiding cultural horizon), that is, some sort of
implicitly understood cultural formation, whose structure is mis-described as being either
freestandingly postmetaphysical; strictly the work of completely self-transparent, pure human
reason; or a subtle vehicle for pernicious normalization. As such, pluralism and polarization is

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always already bounded within this guiding cultural horizon. Presupposing that the three selected
schools are meaningfully representative of the intellectual, pluralist alternatives available in the
early twenty-first century, the critical analysis of these three schools bears out the study’s central
hypothesis.

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Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... iv 
Citation Abbreviations (Selected) ................................................................................................... xi 
1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 
1.1 The Task of the Present Study ............................................................................................. 5 
1.2 Outline of the General Arc of the Study .............................................................................. 8 
1.3 Guiding Hypothesis of the Study ...................................................................................... 12 
I. Liberal Democracy after Metaphysics: The Aspiration for Reasonable Worldview Neutrality . 23 
2. The Political Liberal Project ...................................................................................................... 23 
2.1 Tilting at Windmills?: The Realist Critique ...................................................................... 27 
2.2 The Meaning of Modernity: Pluralism and Freedom ........................................................ 34 
2.3 The Problem of Legitimate Stability: Modus Vivendi Democracy and the Priority of
Liberty ..................................................................................................................................... 44 
2.4 The Aspiration for Worldview Neutrality: The Liberal Principle of Legitimacy and the
Priority of (the Political) Right ................................................................................................ 60 
2.5 The Moral Background to Politics: the Overlapping Consensus ...................................... 79 
2.6 The Idea of the Reasonable ............................................................................................... 86 
2.7 The Proper, Public Use of Shared Human Reason: The Concept of Public Reason ....... 101 
2.8 The Type of Neutrality in Political Liberal Worldview Neutrality ................................. 114 
3. Testing the “Political” Character of Political Liberalism: The Metaphysics of Human Dignity
and the Romantic Moment ........................................................................................................... 130 
3.1 The Idea of Equality ........................................................................................................ 132 
3.2 Universal Human Equality, the Discourse of Dignity, and Controversy about First
Principles ............................................................................................................................... 144 
3.3 The Historical Origins of the Discourse of Dignity ........................................................ 157 

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3.4 Political Liberalism’s Relationship to the Discourse of Dignity ..................................... 171 
3.5 The Significance of an Historically-Inflected Insight ..................................................... 182 
3.6 The Romantic Moment in Contemporary Liberal Thought: A Tactical Retreat into
Particularism .......................................................................................................................... 187 
3.7 The Costs of the Romantic Moment (1): Wherefore Liberal Democracy? (The Rorty
Problem) ................................................................................................................................ 199 
3.8 The Costs of the Romantic Moment (2): Intra-Traditional Conflict and the Liberal
Principle of Legitimacy ......................................................................................................... 213 
4. Excursus: Habermas, Worldview Neutrality, and God—A Continuation of Political Liberalism
by other Means ............................................................................................................................. 221 
4.1 The Meaning of Modernity: The Disenchanted, Postmetaphysical Age ......................... 225 
4.2 The Promise of Procedural Neutrality (1): Discourse Ethics .......................................... 228 
4.3 The Promise of Procedural Neutrality (2): Deliberative Democracy .............................. 237 
4.4 Legitimacy Between Populism and Parliamentarism: Democratic Sovereignty and the
Public Sphere ......................................................................................................................... 242 
4.5 The Co-Originality Thesis and its Problems ................................................................... 250 
4.6 Constitutional Patriotism: Post-national Integration ....................................................... 261 
4.7 Between Kant and Husserl: The (Rationalized) Lifeworld ............................................. 267 
4.8 The Lifeworld’s Implicit Challenge to Procedural Neutrality ......................................... 276 
4.9 The Post-secular Turn: Habermas in the Twenty-First Century ...................................... 289 
4.10 The Post-secular Age and its Implicit Challenge to Procedural Neutrality: The Case of
Human Dignity ...................................................................................................................... 296 
II. The “Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges”: Michel Foucault and the Discourse of
Difference .................................................................................................................................... 306 
5. Disciplinary Normalization and Cultural Revolution: Power and Genealogical Critique ....... 306 
5.1 Michel Foucault: The Man and His Work ....................................................................... 312 
5.2 Left-Nietzscheanism ........................................................................................................ 317 

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5.3 “Power” ........................................................................................................................... 321 
5.4 The Sociology and Metaphysics of Knowledge .............................................................. 335 
5.5 The Meaning of Modernity: The Crisis of “Disciplinary Normalization” ...................... 340 
5.6 La Révolution en permanence: “Genealogy” as Critique ................................................ 352 
5.7 The Role of the “Intellectual”.......................................................................................... 373 
6. The Elusive, Ethical-Political Sensibility of Michel Foucault ................................................. 383 
6.1 Foucault and our Discontents .......................................................................................... 384 
6.2 An Ethical Turn? ............................................................................................................. 401 
6.3 The Political-Ethical Lacunae: Socialization, Politics, and “Normalization” ................. 410 
7. The Reception in the English-Speaking World ........................................................................ 417 
7.1. The Case Against (Mere) Liberal Toleration ................................................................. 421 
7.2. Foucault’s North American Legacy I: Anti-Normativism ............................................. 429 
7.3. Foucault’s North American Legacy II: An Ethical Vision ............................................. 440 
7.4. The Weak Ontotheological Turn .................................................................................... 446 
7.5. The Agonistic-Democratic Public Sphere ...................................................................... 461 
7.6. The Micropolitics of Deep Respect: The Transformative Dimension of “Agonistic”
Democracy ............................................................................................................................ 468 
8. The Antinomies of the Discourse of Difference ...................................................................... 479 
8.1. Will the Strong Ontotheologist Please Stand Up? .......................................................... 482 
8.2. The Politics of Mood—And the Conflict it Engenders .................................................. 498 
8.3. The Cultural Revolution ................................................................................................. 503 
8.4. The Intractable Dēmos: Legitimation Problems and the Rousseauian Paradox ............. 514 
8.5. Stability and the Actual Prospects of Deep Respect ....................................................... 524 
8.6. Un dramma giocoso: The (Redemptive) Tragic View of the World .............................. 534 

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III. The Reactionary Politics of Meaning in an Age Disenchanted: Carl Schmitt ....................... 537 
9. Reading Carl Schmitt; Why Bother? ....................................................................................... 537 
9.1 L’Affaire Carl Schmitt: 1933-1945 ................................................................................. 539 
9.2 The Myth of Carl Schmitt: The Radical, Conservative Revolution in Weimar .............. 547 
9.3 Why Read Carl Schmitt? ................................................................................................. 563 
10. The Legislative State and its Legitimacy in an Age of Mass Democracy: Schmitt’s Critique of
Liberal Institutions ....................................................................................................................... 570 
10.1 The Meaning of Modernity: The Perilous Search for Legitimacy in a Disenchanted “Age
of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations” ............................................................................. 574 
10.2 The Rule of Law and Depersonalization ....................................................................... 581 
10.3 Parliamentarism and the Classical Conception of Representation ................................ 587 
10.4 The Crisis of Legitimacy ............................................................................................... 595 
10.5 Interest Group Pluralism ............................................................................................... 599 
10.6 Excursus: Schmitt and the Total State ........................................................................... 607 
10.7 Procedural Legality and Democratic, Constitutional Suicide ....................................... 610 
10.8 Rousseauian Democracy and Plebiscitary Legitimacy .................................................. 617 
10.9 Identity Politics, German Style: Homogeneity .............................................................. 625 
11. The Polemical-Decisionistic Ground of Sovereign Authority ............................................... 632 
11.1 Sovereignty and the Significance of the State of the Exception .................................... 635 
11.2 The Decision.................................................................................................................. 642 
11.3 The Constitution as the Concrete Order Embodying the Decisionistic Pouvoir
Constituant ............................................................................................................................ 647 
11.4 The Abiding Significance of Decisionism in Schmitt’s Thought .................................. 651 
11.5 The Necessarily “Political” Character of the Constitution ............................................ 657 
11.6 The (Relative) Autonomy of the Political and the Substantively Polemical Criterion of
Politics ................................................................................................................................... 665 

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11.7 The Jus Publicum Europaeum: An Abortive, Post-war Attempt to Soften the “Political”
............................................................................................................................................... 679 
11.8 The Nietzschean-Weberian Background to the Politics of Meaning ............................. 683 
11.9 Empty, Insubstantial Neutralism Enveloped by the Darkness of Battle ........................ 694 
12. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 698 
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 708 
Biography ..................................................................................................................................... 746 

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