raymond geuss,philosophy and real politics

Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real PoliticsPhilosophy and Real Politics by Raymond Geuss, Review by: Reviewed by Samuel FreemanEthics, Vol. 120, No. 1 (October 2009), pp. 175-184Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/647908 .

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Book Reviews 175

The Form of Practical Knowledge is the fruit of years of reflection on Kant’swork, and Engstrom has a distinctive vision and feel for Kant’s thought. Thebook is full of intricate discussions and arguments that are subtle, amazinglyinsightful, and often go quite deep. It is also a densely written book that makesdemands on the reader, but it repays the effort. In working through the bookcarefully, I have learned a lot and have come to see many aspects of the mainlines of argument in the Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason in a newlight. It is an impressive book with the potential to reorient our understandingof Kant’s moral theory.

Andrews ReathUniversity of California, Riverside

Geuss, Raymond. Philosophy and Real Politics.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. 126. $19.95 (cloth).

Keynes wrote at the end of the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money:“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are rightand when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.Indeed, the world is ruled by little else” ([Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1936], 383). Raymond Geuss has long argued that the ideas of contem-porary Anglo-American political philosophers are almost always wrong—or,rather, “ideological.” In Philosophy and Real Politics, he in effect takes issue withKeynes’s claim about the powerful influence of philosophers’ and economists’ideas and theories: rather than governing political conduct, as ideologies theyobscure the real sources of politics, namely, power in the service of certainpeople’s interests.

There is a general failure among Anglo-American political philosophers,Geuss says, to attend to history and the historical context within which theirmain ideas arose and evolved. Geuss contends that historical awareness of thesocial and political contexts within which values such as justice, rights, equality,fair distribution, and so forth, originated and evolved will lead us (at least someof us) to see the futility of normative theories of justice and individual rights.He does not deny the potential influence of some theories as “ideological inter-ventions” (94), but he contends that taking ideas out of their historical contextexaggerates their significance: “Considerations of fairness, equality, justice, andother virtues might well have a perfectly dignified, if subordinate, place in variousadministrative decisions. What I do object to is the claim that they define politics”(100).

Geuss’s critique is aimed specifically at “present reactionary forms of neo-Kantianism” (99), particularly Rawls’s, but also Nozick’s, and he condemns inpassing utilitarianism and other forms of academic “moralizing” such as hypo-thetical models of the “ideal speech community,” “(an ideal) democracy,” and“socialism” (8; including then Habermas’s version and other accounts of delib-erative democracy and also neo-Marxist accounts of justice propounded by G. A.Cohen, John Roemer, et al.). Geuss rejects the idea that any “ideal theory” of“Ethics” can be formulated and “applied” to “real world politics” (6), certainly not



176 Ethics October 2009

without “unceasingly reflecting” on history, sociology, economics, psychology, andother empirical studies (7). But engaging in these sorts of reflections should leadus to see the futility of any moral theory that prescribes universal principles ofjustice. Insofar as Geuss has an ethical view, it would be “contextualist” andreveal itself in his criticisms of others rather than via any statement of normativeprinciples, an exercise which he rejects as misguided (96). In this review, I willsummarize the two parts of Geuss’s book and conclude with some reflectionson his main argument.

I. THE REALIST APPROACH TO POLITICS

Geuss precedes his critical attack on contemporary political philosophy with aconstructive outline of an alternative method for political philosophy. Insteadof “ethics first,” Geuss suggests a “realist” approach to political philosophy, in-formed by four “theses”:

1. “Political philosophy must be realist” and concern itself not with how peo-ple “ought ‘rationally’” to act but with “real motivation,” or what actuallymotivates people (9). What is important is not simply what people say,think, or believe but what they do and what actually happens as a result.

2. This suggests that “politics” is about action and its context, not “mere beliefsand propositions” (11). Beliefs and propositions influence action (e.g.,“Chicago style neo-liberal economics” and “rational decision theory” havehad effects on recent politics—at least, ideological effects), but we do notknow what the nature of the influence will be.

3. “Politics is historically located,” and as a result “excessive generalising endsup not being informative. There are no interesting ‘eternal questions’ ofpolitical philosophy” (13). General claims about human nature and basichuman needs relied upon by ideal theories cannot be taken in isolation,detached from “specific cultural and historical circumstances” (15; and see14–15).

4. “Politics is more like the exercise of a craft or art” than like the applicationof a theory (15). It requires skills that cannot be learned by way of abstractor ideal theories. Thus, moral philosophers have little of practical value toimpart to the practice of politics. They (especially Kantians) have “fallen preyto a kind of fetishism” (16) in assuming a sharp distinction between “Fact”and “Value,” “Is” and “Ought,” and the “Descriptive” versus the “Normative”(16).

In its simplest terms, a realist political philosophy regards “modern politics[as] importantly about power, its acquisition, distribution, and use” and studiesit accordingly (96). While others have expressed much the same view (e.g.,Laswell and early Dahl), Geuss’s focus on power relations stems largely from hisreading of Lenin. For Lenin, politics basically concerns “Who whom?” or thequestion, “Who !does1 what to whom for whose benefit?” (23, 25). For example,the statement “Unemployment has risen x percent” means that certain peoplewho control economic organizations have terminated others’ employment tobenefit someone else (24). Politics is then always about the power that somepeople exercise over others for someone’s benefit: “To think politically is to



Book Reviews 177

think about agency, power, and interests, and the relations among these” (25).Of course, not all power is coercive power. Power is connected with the “abilityto do” (27). There is then also persuasive power, the power of charismatic figures,and other forms of “soft” power at work in politics (27).

Geuss says that an implication of the Leninist model is that we cannot cometo any substantive understanding of politics by discussing “the good, the right,the true, or the rational” in complete abstraction from the way these conceptsimpinge upon people’s actions. And this requires that political theory mustproceed from an understanding of existing social and political institutions andculture (28).

Here, a normative political philosopher might reply that Geuss confusespolitical philosophy with political science, for the role of a moral conceptionof justice is not to understand contemporary social and political relations andinstitutions but to reform them by providing an ideal of social and politicalrelations. But Geuss rejects the idea that normative (or “ideal”) theory canprovide legitimate (or nonideological) normative guidance in reforming society.Moreover, Geuss’s Leninist view of politics as power relations suggests that po-litical theory itself is a form of power. This in effect is Lenin’s “principle ofpartisanship,” that “every theory is ‘partisan’” (29) and is “potentially a partisanintervention” (30). Since “the politics of theorisation” is unavoidable (29), thenin constructing political and social theory, we should be aware of “the actualpolitical implications of a theory” (30).

Some readers might be led to suspect that Geuss’s realism is informed bya kind of moral and evaluative skepticism. For example, he says, “In politics ‘Itwould be good if . . . ’ means someone has decided that it would be desirableor advisable if this were to take place” (28). But he seems to deny that he iscommitted to skepticism. In any case, since (as I argue below) the effectivenessof Geuss’s realist or critical theory itself relies upon evaluative claims, skepticismabout normativity would seem only to compromise his argument.

Geuss also discusses as central to realist political philosophy questionsraised by Nietzsche on the timing of political priorities and questions raisedby Weber on political legitimation. Weber, Geuss says, thought that politics is“about collective forms of legitimating violence” (34). Geuss says that althoughnot all politics is about control of and legitimation of violence (e.g., providingpublic goods is not), a realistic understanding of why a society behaves politi-cally in a certain way requires that we “take account of the specific way theexisting forms of legitimation work” (36).

This leads to a discussion of five tasks for political philosophy. This section(37–55) is perhaps the most original part of Geuss’s book. Briefly, “the task ofpolitical philosophy” (37) is

1. Understanding : To impart understanding of how politics works, political phi-losophy should involve “a systematic attempt to understand how the organisedforms of acting together in a given society actually work, and . . . explainwhy certain decisions are taken, why certain projects fail and others succeed,or why social and political action exhibits the patterns it does” (37–38).

2. Evaluation: Since, as Nietzsche says, we are evaluating animals, political phi-losophy should enable us to evaluate—as good, bad, better, or worse—po-




litical actions and arrangements. This includes not just moral evaluation, towhich ideal moral theory mistakenly assigns absolute priority, but evaluationalong multifarious dimensions—for example, usefulness, efficiency, “per-spicuousness,” simplicity, and aesthetic appeal (39).

3. Orientation: Political philosophy has a role in enabling people to orient them-selves within their society and within a worldview, so that they can avoidanomie, have a sense of their “place in the world,” and “lead a ‘meaningful’life” (40).

4. Conceptual innovation: Political philosophy can make “a constructive con-tribution to politics by conceptual invention or innovation” (42). Here,Geuss provides a compelling discussion of how the early modern inventionof the concept of “the state,” as an abstract structure of power and authoritydistinct from both the populace and the prince or ruling class, enabledmembers of societies to understand their situation and define and addressvarious sorts of problems, including “the problems of ensuring politicalorder in an incipiently atomised society without recourse to religion” (46).

5. Ideology: Geuss defines an “ideology” as beliefs, attitudes, and preferencesthat are typically believed to be connected with universal interests but thatare in fact distorted by specific power relations (52). Political theory, whileit has often had the function of propounding and fostering ideologies,should instead serve the function of analyzing and helping to dissolve them.

II. FAILURES OF REALISM

In his book’s second half, Geuss criticizes three of the predominant normativeapproaches within contemporary political philosophy: rights-based accounts(typified by Nozick), justice-based accounts (exemplified by Rawls), and egali-tarian- or equality-based accounts of justice (here, Geuss addresses no one inparticular). Generally, Geuss’s critique questions the purported role of normativepolitical conceptions put forth by neo-Kantians such as Rawls, Nozick, and Dwor-kin; by utilitarians; and (although he mentions no one by name) by socialistsand neo-Marxists. To some degree, Geuss’s arguments resemble those made byBernard Williams. Williams also calls his approach “political realism,” contrastingit with the “political moralism” he rejects (see Williams, In the Beginning Was theDeed, ed. Geoffrey Hawthorn [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005],3–4). He, too, criticizes political moralists for ignoring the historical origins oftheir concepts and principles, for naively assuming that our moral intuitions arebased in reason and not in historical conditions (Williams, In the Beginning, 13),and for supposing that moral principles have universal applicability. But whileWilliams, as a liberal democrat, sees governments as having “to offer a justificationof its power to each subject” (In the Beginning, 4), Geuss would seem to regard allsuch attempts, and all normative political theories that inform such justifications,as at best “ideological.” Normative political theories are not (or not simply) falsebut, rather, are (also) illusory and misleading in that they obscure the powerrelations that underlie institutions and our social and political relations.

Hence, Nozick’s libertarianism builds upon the fixation on individual rights,particularly property rights, that is part of American political consciousness. Howotherwise, Geuss asks, could Nozick simply assert, without any argument, that



Book Reviews 179

individuals have absolute rights in their persons and possessions and then pro-ceed without further analysis to draw consequences from this assertion (cf. 64)?Geuss then proceeds by recounting the origin and history of the idea of sub-jective rights in order to show that rights are not a “natural part of the frameworkfor political thinking” (68). A problem with Nozick’s taking individual rights asthe self-evident basis for political thought is that “he actively distracts peoplefrom asking other, highly relevant questions” (69) about, for example, the powerrelationships that rights sustain.

With regard to egalitarian views, Geuss says Marx and Engels were “explicitantiegalitarians, or rather, they . . . held that abstract equality as a social idealwas philosophically incoherent” (76). People can be made only more or lessequal in some respect, and to make them more equal along one dimensionmakes them less so along another (78). Many legal inequalities have great socialvalue; for example, in occupying offices and positions, we want only qualifiedpeople to perform surgeries and to practice law. Geuss reveals his own normativeproclivities in saying that there is nothing wrong with unequal distribution initself: “What is objectionable is depriving people” of some needed good (hementions medical treatment) “if it is in principle available. That in most societiesis a definite social ill, and we do not need to appeal to the notion of ‘equality’to see why it is an ill” (79, 80).

Here, neo-Marxist egalitarians, such as G. A. Cohen, would object and arguethat equal distribution of certain goods (income and wealth, or access to ad-vantage, or opportunities for welfare) that are the consequences of luck is re-quired by justice, as is the precept that people otherwise should be awardedaccording to their effort and not for other reasons. But Geuss, as is clear in hiscriticisms of Rawls (70–76, 80–89), also rejects theories of justice and the moralintuitions that inform them. Many of his objections are familiar from otherdiscussions, including discussions that fully accept normative/evaluative dis-course and theorizing. He questions how the “disembodied agents” in the origi-nal position can make any choice in ignorance of all particular facts and ofgrounds or reasons for making a choice. Moreover, he asks, why does Rawls“assume that ‘choice’ under the specified circumstances will exhibit any kindof convergence at all?” The original position is “an incoherent concept” (71;briefly, Rawls does not just “assume” agreement but, rather, gives a series ofarguments for it [see Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1971), secs. 26–29, etc.]. Moreover, the parties are not deprived ofall grounds for choice; they know that they have certain fundamental interests—e.g., in the exercise and development of their “moral powers”—and that theyrequire adequate primary social goods to realize them, as well as most anyconception of the good).

Geuss also claims that Rawls asserts but does not make the case for thepriority of justice, in his narrow sense of “fairness,” over other social values. Butwhy, Geuss asks, should fairness have uncompromising priority over all other“vital human interests” and moral and political values, including “survival, se-curity, agency, transparency, efficiency, [and] self-esteem”? (83). The beginningof a response to Geuss’s challenge is that Rawls does not give fairness absolutepriority over all other values. Instead, fairness is a procedural value that pre-supposes substantive values and certain “vital human interests.” Each of the




values Geuss mentions (as well as some he does not, such as individual freedomand independence, equal respect for persons, guaranteeing peoples’ basic needs,and living with others on terms which equal citizens can endorse because theyare justifiable to them) are interpreted and incorporated into Rawls’s accountof justice as fairness. The value of fairness, rather than trumping these othervalues, enables Rawls to make them cohere in a substantive conception of justice.Together with other values Geuss mentions—such as “agency” (understood asrational moral agency) and “transparency” (understood as publicity of the socialbases of our relations)—fairness provides structure and content to the choiceprocedure for principles of justice that address the fundamental interests ofdemocratic citizens. The significance and priority assigned to political and moralvalues of justice are then expressed through the application of principles ofjustice to institutions.

Geuss says that “neo-Kantian” views like Rawls’s are “reactionary” (as com-pared with what?) and that Rawls authorizes “vastly different powers and re-sources” (99, 91). Here, Geuss perpetuates the post-Marxist Left’s allegation (orextended argument, in G. A. Cohen’s case) that Rawls’s difference principlejustifies the enormous inequalities typical of capitalism. But Rawls explicitly re-jects capitalism and the capitalist welfare state for this and other reasons: “Welfarestate capitalism permits a small class to have a near monopoly of the means ofproduction. Property-owning democracy avoids this” (Rawls, Justice as Fairness:A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001],139). The second principle of justice supports either a property-owning de-mocracy or liberal socialism, depending on factual circumstances (see Rawls,Theory of Justice [1971], 274, 280–81; Justice as Fairness, secs. 41–42). In eithersystem, economic powers (which include control of the means of production),along with income and ownership of productive wealth, are widely dispersedamong democratic citizens (Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 139–40). There is nothingreactionary about Rawls’s account of economic justice; the allegation is ridiculous.

The most distinctive criticism Geuss makes of Rawls is that the principlesof justice are decided upon in ignorance of all facts about society, includingexisting power relations and the circumstances under which our moral intutionsare cultivated: “To the extent, then, to which Rawls draws attention away fromthe phenomenon of power and the way in which it influences our lives and theway we see the world, his theory is itself ideological. To think that an appropriatepoint of departure for understanding the political world is our intuitions of whatis ‘just,’ without reflecting on where those intuitions come from, how they aremaintained, and what interests they might serve, seems to exclude from thebeginning the very possibility that these intuitions might themselves be ‘ideo-logical’” (90).

Rawls is not trying to achieve an “understanding [of] the political world.”Still, his theory does not exclude historical and critical inquiries into the originsand function of our moral convictions of justice. Simply because the parties inthe original position are ignorant of such facts does not mean that Rawls didnot take them into account in arriving at his considered convictions of justiceand deciding how to set up the original position and, later, in assessing theresulting principles of justice in reflective equilibrium. Indeed, such a historicaland critical inquiry into the sources of our considered moral convictions might



Book Reviews 181

be regarded as part of the process of reflective equilibrium (in a loose sense)that Rawls encourages. Nothing Geuss says suggests that any specific consideredmoral conviction about justice Rawls relies upon should be shaken by “realist”inquiry. Instead, Geuss, without making any substantial argument for it, seemsto proceed from the general assumption that existing power relations mustinevitably taint our moral intuitions (all of them?), so much so that they areideological and an unreliable basis for constructing a moral theory. This is avery different argument from the one that Williams and other intuitionists/particularists rely upon to question Rawls’s and other abstract moral theories,for it questions the very possibility of doing any normative moral and politicalphilosophy at all.

Regarding the frequent complaint that he unjustifiably relies on moralintuitions, Rawls said at least two things. First, relying on intuitions (or “consid-ered convictions”) in political philosophy is unavoidable. Those who dismissconsidered moral intuitions wholesale must rely on philosophical intuitions ofsome kind (evaluative, metaphysical, etc.). Second, given this, and given that wehave to begin somewhere in moral theorizing, it seems more reasonable to beginwith our considered moral and evaluative intuitions rather than with anyoneelse’s or anywhere else. Geuss clearly denies the second claim—he contendsthat political philosophy should begin with the examination of power relations—and he thinks that this forecloses the possibility of normative moral theory. Tothe extent that political philosophy is normative at all, it should be critical ofexisting power relations and should not seek to construct a normative moraltheory.

But surely critical realist theory is informed by ethical intuitions of its ownabout justice and the human good—regarding (for example) the injustice ordegradation caused by economic exploitation and existing power relations, orthe distortion of our characters caused by the wage relationship and ideologicalconsciousness, or the failure of existing power relations to meet basic humanneeds (e.g., for medical care; see 79–80); and so on. If he is not relying on hisethical intuitions, what otherwise could be the force of Geuss’s use of the term“reactionary” and what could be the problem with “vast differences” in powerand wealth? Call these sorts of judgments what you will, Geuss’s denial of thefact/value and the descriptive/normative distinctions cannot get around the factthat they play a large role in his critique of moral theory. Reliance on “our” ethicalintuitions of justice and value is as inescapable for critical theory as for ideal moraltheory. So it cannot be that all our ethical intuitions are ideological and unreliable;otherwise, “realist” political philosophy itself would not be possible.

But if so, then how are we to distinguish between those moral and evaluativeintuitions that are reliable and those that are not? Geuss is perhaps right thathistorical and other inquiries of the kind he envisions are relevant to this task.However, the usefulness of inquiry into the historical and cultural origins andevolution of our political and moral concepts is limited. By itself it cannot tellus whether our moral intuitions, or moral concepts, are false, distorted, orillusory. Moreover, we do not need to investigate the origins of the concept ofsubjective rights to see that Nozick’s account is in need of, but sorely lacking,a justification of its fundamental claims regarding absolute property rights (seeresponses to Nozick by Nagel, G. A. Cohen, and many others on this shortcom-




ing). And even if the concepts of rights, justice, and so forth, have served andcontinue in their myriad uses to serve ideological functions, this does not meanthat all moral conceptions of justice are misguided and illusory. In the end, wehave to accept at least some of our moral and evaluative convictions as reliableeven to engage in “realist political philosophy” as Geuss (and Williams) describeit. No reasonable person would regard slavery or serfdom as justifiable underany (except the most extreme) conditions. This considered conviction, alongwith many others, provides a basis for assessing other less secure moral convic-tions about which we might disagree—regarding economic justice and inequal-ities of income, wealth, and economic power, for example. Realist inquiry maygo some way toward helping us to clarify our convictions in these matters, andit would surely be relevant if critical inquiry into the roots of our consideredconvictions does anything to shake them. But once they have been clarified andrefined, we ultimately have to rely on bringing our considered moral and evalu-ative convictions into some kind of reflective equilibrium, not just for practicalreasons of actively engaging with the political world but even for philosophicallycoherent reasons of effectively engaging in realist criticism.

Finally, unlike Geuss and Williams, I think there is a genuine need for apolitical conception of justice in a democratic society for at least two reasonsthat are entirely separate from the issue of “ideal theory” or moral philosophyas a discipline. First, there are genuine practical questions that are confrontedby government agents regarding, for example, the specification and scope ofconstitutional rights and limits on political power; or what is required to meetpeoples’ basic needs for nutrition, housing, medical care, and education; or thespecification of property rights and economic regulations of many kinds. Thereare all sorts of questions regarding the distributive effects of economic and socialpolicies, banking and finance practices and regulations, land use and environ-mental policies, pollution control, and so on, that currently are decided onpurely economic grounds, informed by cost-benefit analysis and some versionof the principle of utility. These questions have to be decided some way, andeconomists, being who they are, naturally tend toward utilitarian solutions. Some-times more enlightened regulators will take the distributive effects of economicanalyses into account, and then considerations of fair distribution may be bal-anced intuitively against purely aggregative considerations. These are the normaltools of government agencies, both in the United States and abroad, that cur-rently forge the innumerable laws and regulations that profoundly influencedaily life. Rawls’s principles of justice provide alternative standards designed tobe more compatible with a democratic society and to address these kinds ofpolitical questions. There may be other reasonable alternatives. But the politicalreality is that some general normative principle or set of standards for distrib-uting economic and other social benefits and burdens is inevitably going to berelied upon in making these decisions in any society (even a “neo-Leninist”society). It is far better, politically and ideologically speaking, for democraticcitizens to be made aware of, discuss, debate, and even determine these prin-ciples themselves rather than to allow them to be made unchecked by unnamedbureaucrats without anyone’s public knowledge or democratic supervision. Pub-lic knowledge of the social and economic standards that ground our relations



Book Reviews 183

goes at least some way toward relieving the ideological mystification that Geusscondemns.

This suggests a second role for a political conception of justice—its role inpublic political justification. In a democratic society, at least, citizens owe to eachother an accounting of the exercise of political power and a justification of socialand economic norms, whether coercive or not, that structure their relations ascitizens and as economic agents. Public political justification is not simply amatter of mutual respect but a condition of the freedom and independence ofequal citizens. It is crucial if we are to avoid the very ideological mystificationthat Geuss finds us prone to. It is ironic, then, that he finds no role for suchpublic justification. Even Williams’s political realism accepts the moral demandthat “the state has to offer a justification of its power to each subject” (Williams,In the Beginning, 4). Unlike Williams, I do not see how a full justification of thekind he calls for can be provided in a modern democratic society without apolitical conception of justice. But whereas Williams rejects any such abstractmoral or political conception on grounds of maintaining the integrity of ethicalintutions he endorses, Geuss’s rejection ultimately rests on calling into questionconsidered ethical intuitions themselves. Geuss thinks the liberal conception ofpublic justification is itself a species of ideological mystification. What is notclear is whether he gives up on public justification altogether (but then, whoexactly engages in “critique”? and to whom is the critique addressed?) or, instead,has a different conception of it (in which case, what is it?).

Either way, Geuss owes us a theory to back up his unsupported claims thatour considered moral convictions of right and justice are ideological. This isnot a request for a positive constructive alternative of the kind that Geuss rejectsas liberals’ way of controlling their critics (96). The Marxist concept of ideologygenerally presupposes some account of social and political relations that areobscured from peoples’ awareness by ideological concepts (of justice, religion,etc.); Marx’s own account of ideological consciousness presupposed his historicalmaterialism, the labor theory of value, and a theory of exploitation of workersdue to capitalists’ extraction of surplus value. Very few theorists endorse Marx’stheory of history or his economics any longer (although many see exploitation ofsome form as still existing and condemn it as an injustice). What, then, is theaccount of social and political relations that sustains Geuss’s accusations that ourconvictions of right and justice are riddled with ideological illusions? It is notworked out, but it seems to be based in Geuss’s Leninist view that politics is aboutpower relations—about “Who !does1 what to whom for whose benefit?” (25).

It would have been most helpful if Geuss had given some general indicationof the kinds of power relations (political and economic) that he regards aslegitimate and not prone to ideological illusion, and why. What is it about existingpower relations that leads/requires our current normative convictions and po-litical theories to be ideological? Is any and every normative political principleor theory, no matter the circumstances, condemned to ideological status—even“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”? If so, why?And if not, why not? Surely there is something constructive, and not just critical,that philosophers have to contribute to the inevitable and morally necessarydiscussions of the appropriate distribution of income and wealth and of politicaland economic powers and positions of office and responsibility within society.




A moral theory of justice does not need to present itself as having universalapplication or validity. It can be “contextualist” too, drawn up to address thecircumstances of a modern democratic society and based on citizens’ perceivedand existing needs and a view of their fundamental interests (e.g., in maintainingoptimal conditions of human agency or in living a “meaningful life”).

Perhaps there have been political philosophers who have attempted to pre-scribe “universal principles” from “the point of view of the universe.” If this wereall Geuss had in mind when he condemns the “ideal theory” of contemporarypolitical philosophy, then his criticisms are perhaps well taken. But politicalphilosophy, at its best (including Rawls’s ideal theory), has always engaged withthe normative ideas that are always and everywhere implicated by social andpolitical life. In condemning “ethical intutions” as ideological, Geuss impliesthat our normative convictions are not to be respected and taken seriously. Hethen shows that his real quarrel is not with philosophy but with normativepolitical discourse and the conviction held by large numbers of people that theirnormative convictions matter, at least sometimes, in the conduct of politics. Aschallenging and refreshingly original as Geuss’s realist political philosophy oftenis, I do not think he has made the case against considered moral convictionsor those normative political philosophies that seriously engage with them andthe normative ideas implicit in “real world politics.”

Samuel FreemanUniversity of Pennsylvania

Gomberg, Paul. How to Make Opportunity Equal.Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. Pp. vii�184.

Paul Gomberg says conflict in society has its main source not in religion or inrival conceptions of the good but in race or more accurately the racial divisionof labor (11). He denies that this problem can be solved in a capitalist society,but in How to Make Opportunity Equal, Gomberg is not trying to win an argument.He is trying to tell the truth. The six-year graduation rate at Chicago StateUniversity, where Gomberg has taught for over twenty years, is under 20 percent(9). His students have the will to win, or they wouldn’t be in college in the firstplace. But they are inner-city blacks, and that tells us a lot about their chancesof success—indeed, more than it should.

Gomberg sees the market as fostering a degrading specialization. He says,“We divide labor in two ways. First, we separate tasks of organization from thoseof execution. This separation leads to a command relationship between thosewho control the labor process and those who labor. . . . Second, among thosewho labor, the work is divided into closely supervised labor requiring easilymastered skills and more complex tasks carried out under less supervision” (11).These distinctions matter. Both Gomberg and I worked for the post office: inmy case, for five years before going back to college; in Gomberg’s case, betweenacademic jobs. Gomberg isolates the exact thing that made our jobs good. Asa letter carrier, I came in every morning to find a pile of mail on my desk, andmy job was to get that mail into the right people’s mailboxes by the end of the



raymond geuss,philosophy and real politics

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