The project aims to defend an account of political progress anchored to an evolutionary theory of norms of justice. At the center of it will be an effort to study norms of justice as a specific type of response to a particular problem: the problem of how to justify the use of power in conflicts of a political nature.
The idea that human beings make moral progress in the course of trying to solve problems is familiar from the pragmatist literature on the topic (Dewey, Peirce, Kitcher). In my project I shall rely on the method of philosophical pragmatism to reflect on the relation between the way in which pragmatists defend moral progress and the idea of political progress.
My aim is to explain the similarities and differences between moral and political progress and to articulate an account of political progress that is senstive to how we learn from history. I also aim to respond to some critiques that the defence of political progress attracts, for example that progress is a dangerous idea which has given rise to instances of paternalism, colonial domination and narratives of civilisational superiority (Muthu, Pitts, Armitage, Bell).
In my project I try to show that we can address these objections by providing an account of political progress based on historical learning from the crisis of past political institutions . The working hypothesis is that justice is the kind of concept that is subject to progressive functional refinement, if we understand the function of justice as the regulation of the coercive use of power by those who are subjected to it.
Different regime types, for example, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy can be seen as examples of ways in which political power can be exercised. The ability of different forms of rule to respond to the concerns of the people subjected to them tells us much about how the function of justice is discharged and can also be applied to the institutions of the present.
The aim of the project is to develop a theory of justice that has critical purchase on the present whilst also being able to make judgement calls about what counted as a progressive vs. regressive process of political transition in the past.
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Principal investigator
Project details
Project duration: 3 years
Project funder: Leverhulme Trust
- Lea Ypi, The Architectonic of Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022 (monograph)
Op-eds connected to the topic:
- Blaming 2020 for our misery obscures the reasons why this year was wretched, The Guardian, 09.12.2020
- A crisis of the social contract: why we must transform our democracy, New Statesman, 03 July 2020 issue on “Anatomy of a crisis”
- The New Institute Hamburg, Guest Evening Lecture
- University of Leuven, Philosophy Festival, Guest Lecture
- University of Geneva, Graduate Student Conference in Political Philosophy, Keynote
- Cornell University, Political Theory Research Seminar
- Stanford University, Political Theory Research Seminar
- University of Rotterdam, Conference on Independence in Kant’s Philosophy
- University of Cambridge, Moral Sciences Club Research Seminar
- University of Edinburgh, Centre for Future Studies Keynote Lecture
- University of Kaliningrad, Kant and the Sciences Conference
- Yale University, Political Science Research Seminar
- New York University, Sociology Department, Invited Lecture
- Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, Symposium on “Performing Society”