Normative Theory STEVE BUCKLER The roots of normative theory lie in the long history of moral and political philosophy, from the ancient Greeks to the modern day. Since Plato and Aristotle, questions about the best kind of lif€ that can be lived and about the best political order (that would promote that life) have preoccupied political philosophers. The questions at the heart of political philosophy have always seemed to invite a search for ultimate, objective moral reference points, according to which, in turn, critical assessments of our existing political practices and institutions can be made. Of course, as one would expect of a tradition with such a long history, normative theorising * of this kind has undergone many changes and crises. One of the most serious of these crises occurred in the mid twentieth century and was sufficiently acute to prompt the suspicion that political philosophy, in anything resembling its traditional form, was no longer viable as a discipline. In order to gain a sense of where normative theory stands today, it is useful to look at the intellectual basis of this crisis, at the assault mounted pon normative theory in the early twentieth century by the philosophical movement known as ‘logical positivism’. We shall then examine some influential alternative accounts of how normative theory might proceed, cach of which has contributed to its revival. As we shall see, essential to the logical positivist attack on traditional normative inquiry was a particular fet of epistemological assumptions, assumptions about what counts as real knowledge and what can meaningfully be said about the world. Each of the alternatives, in its own way, challenges these assumptions. Logical Positivism and the death of Political philosophy ae the theorist Peter Laslett published an essay in which he argued Contpad st Philosophy was dead (Laslett 1956) This view, by no means pee AMES west bused pon acnse thar the questions aplcnatog Philosophy had now been revealed as essentially meaningless. 172Steve Buckler 173 Questions about the best kind of life or the best political order, inviting ‘moral pronouncements, were fundamentally misconeeived. They objectiv oie sed upon errors concerning what could count as real or objective prowledge. These errors were pernicious in that they led us into fruitless speculation and nonsensical claims; but they had finally been unmasked by a philosophical movement associated with the term positivism. rrhis term has a range of different, although related, usages referring to doctrines in philosophy, jurisprudence, literary history, theology and, more ecently, as outlined elsewhere in this volume, in social science. Of most jaterest to us here is its manifestation in philosophical form through the movement that became known as logical positivism or, sometimes, logical empiricism. This theoretical movement (which, as we shall see, was not ‘nconnected with the development of positivist social science) had its origins in the early twentieth century, but drew upon earlier philosophical arguments in order to effect a thoroughgoing reassessment and modifica~ tion of our understanding of the basis of knowledge. In making this reassessment, the logical positivists consciously aimed to undermine many of the assumptions that had underwritten, amongst other things, the kind of normative theorising embodied in traditional political philosophy. Aogical positivism prioritised the methods of natural science, which Sought true knowledge through quantitative measurement of material phenomena and through physical experiments that established facts concerning the behaviour of these phenomena. Its historical reference points were the empiricist theories of knowledge developed, in the light of the emergence of modern science, by philosophers in the eighteenth century. A particular influence was the work of David Hume, arguably ‘the real father of positivist philosophy’ (Kolakowski 1972: 43). Challenging what he saw as the speculative nature of traditional r philosophy, Hume argued that all our knowledge of the world is actually derived from particular empirical experiences (Hume 1976). Even abstract concepts are derived from generalisations based on sense experience. Thus, true understanding always, ultimately, deals in matters of fact. The only other form of understanding that we can credit concerns the logical relations between the ideas that come from experience: for example, those expressed in mathematics. At the same time, Hume argued, no statement of empirical fact in itself implied a value judgement: sense experience tells us only how the world is and nothing about how we might think it ought to be. Thus, since all true knowledge comes from empirical experience, statements of value could not be said to be in any sense expressions of knowledge and were only matters of convention. Hume’s work was consciously iconoclastic and its sceptical, reformist spirit was reproduced in the approach of the logical positivists in the early part of the twentieth century. Building upon the insights of Hume, the174 Normative Theory logical positivist approach combined an empiricist viata tniviie eis toe mphasis upon formal Jogic, resulting in a method that provided a an gprehensive account ofthe nature of human knowledge and promised comPicate (or good what were seen as the speculative myths and illusions rewvading traditional philosophy. The most accessible programmatic Petement of the logical positivist position came with A.J. Ayer’s famous Language, Truth and Logic, first published in 1936 (Ayer 1971) Ayer proceeds from a rejection of the traditional philosophical distinc- tion between essence and appearance, familiar from the thought of Plato. On that view, the realm of appearances, of sense experience, gives us only \ fleeting and unreliable knowledge of the world, Beyond this realm, however, lies a realm of essences, embodying the true or ideal nature of things, perceivable only through reason, to which sensorily experienced objects only approximate. This sort of distinction had underwritten the metaphysical claims running through much of the history of philosophy, claims for which no sensory evidence can be produced and which rely only on (usually theological) myths or speculations about a ‘higher’ realm of ultimate truth. Against this Ayer poses a view of knowledge as based upon sense experience and upon generalisations from that experience in the form of ordering concepts. He also affirms the corresponding Humean distinc- tion between fact and value. Since sense experience in itself implies no J statements of value, then such statements could not be accorded the status of objective knowledge. Ultimately, they have to be seen purely as expressions of feeling, and, as such, they ate not supportable by rational argument. Therg_are no objective standards by which they can be appraised or one judged superior to another. When people engage in meaningful moral debate, Ayer argues, in actuality these debates are reducible to disputes about matters of fact. Where genuine clashes of values occur, no further argument is possible. Clearly, Ayer’s position implies a severe limitation upon the kinds of statements that might qualify as knowledge. Ultimately, the only kinds of statements that can add to our knowledge are factual claims, based on Sense experience, that are in principle open to empirical testing and validation. The only other kinds of statements that are meaningful in this ‘espect concern the logical properties of, and relations between, concepts, the generalisations from experience that we use to order and categorise thar experience. These statements do not strictly speaking give us knowl- edge about the world but may tell us something useful about the structure Bae! “Ghee that we use, We ean dsec the meanings of concepts se aia a are rightly or wrongly applied and how they a use it notably soe concepts. This marks the limit of meaning! yt nants a {Upon gag ncluded are statements of value or metaphysical claims bas “PPosed experiences of another realm beyond the empirical.