Ian Shapiro's Political Criticism
Isaac, Jeffrey C.
POLITICAL CRITICISM, by Ian Shapiro. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. 338 pp. In this age of widespread ideological disenchantment, it is fashionable for political theorists...
...As he puts it: "It is part of the notion of authentic action that one does not do things merely because someone else tells one to do them...
...This discussion leads Shapiro to his account of political theory as "principled criticism...
...that "the question is never whether community but what sort...
...Aware of its promise, however, Shapiro is also aware of its limits...
...Is the need for a democratic ethos a conclusion of principled criticism, or its premise...
...He then proceeds to give his own conception of political theory, what he calls a "modified Aristotelianism" based upon a "critical naturalist" philosophy...
...Shapiro argues that each of these theorists presents us with an abstract concept of "community" or "tradition" that fails to address complex problems of political power and that endorses some conception of interpretation at the expense of genuine political criticism...
...For him we are limited beings always subject to natural, psychological, and political constraints...
...but this does not necessarily render these beliefs true, nor does it render criticisms based on these beliefs true...
...The first is that his defense of connected criticism speaks more to the effectiveness of criticism than to its truth...
...Indeed, if anything, they derive from the richness and importance of what Shapiro is trying to do...
...Shapiro seeks to use some of Aristotle's ideas about ethical reason in defense of a wholly modern, democratic political theory...
...Shapiro accepts the idea that social life generates its own practical criticisms, and that any meaningful criticism must attend to its context...
...and that the impossibility of discerning transhistorical and indubitable foundations of political argument "does not entail that foundational questions can ever be ignored, abandoned, or otherwise be regarded as settled...
...This seems true, but, if it is, then Shapiro is clearly claiming that we have an interest not simply in truth but in some kind of autonomy as well...
...While Shapiro acknowledges affinities with Habermas's critique of technocracy, he nowhere discusses Habermas's most recent work...
...Shapiro first rehearses the common objections to "neo-Kantian" contract theory: that its claims to neutrality are unfounded, that its individualism fails to offer a satisfying account of political community, that it lacks a conception of the good life, and that it has an ideological character...
...From realist philosophy of science he draws the idea that it is possible to have reliable, though never WINTER • 1992 • 107 absolute, knowledge of the world, including the human world...
...Walzer is clearly the theorist closest to Shapiro's heart, and in some ways this book is a dialogue with Walzer's work...
...but one wishes he would have said more on this score...
...Yet there are a number of points at which more discussion would strengthen Shapiro's argument...
...From a variety of thinkers he draws the idea that there is a human nature and that human beings naturally adapt themselves to changing situations, aiming at eudaimonia or well-being...
...The great advantage to Shapiro's view is its insistence that it is possible for reason to criticize, if not rise above, the particularities of convention...
...What does it mean for people to "know and act on the truth...
...He then discusses the major critics of neo-Kantianism, including Richard Rorty, Michael Walzer, Allan Bloom, Alasdair MacIntyre, and J.G.A...
...Ian Shapiro's Political Criticism is a bold challenge to this state of affairs...
...Shapiro argued that such efforts are flawed by their lack of a convincing account of human nature...
...One regards his decision to focus on AngloAmerican academic debates...
...Shapiro not only uncouples the enterprise of critique from any philosophy of history or privileged social group, he also rejects the vision of "emancipation" if by this we mean the lifting of all social constraints...
...It would be interesting to see how Shapiro would advance his thesis in a sustained encounter with such continental theorists as Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas...
...Critical reason, if not criticism itself, has been called into question, and it is widely argued that political convictions rest on little more than prejudice and power...
...Shapiro offers a useful corrective to Walzer's concern with connection rather than truthfulness...
...Walzer's argument makes demands upon the aspirations of criticism (they should be limited), its form (ordinary complaint or reproach rather than grandiose pronouncement), and its attitude (a questioning attachment to existing conventions...
...It is at least conceivable that the detached social critic is over the course of time more powerful than those who adopt a more conventional posture...
...In Political Criticism Shapiro is equally critical of the "anti-Kantian" critics of Rawls and Nozick...
...Shapiro suggests that this establishes an organic link between political theory as principled criticism and democracy as an ethos of questioning and challenging entrenched social forms...
...On this last point he recurs to an analogy with the construction of a house—while it is most certainly true that there is no single blueprint for all houses, it is equally true that it is impossible to build a house without foundations of some sort...
...Shapiro's book is an innovative approach to political theory...
...Shapiro's discussions, however, are far from dismissive, and he seeks to incorporate what is valuable in the views of those he criticizes...
...Shapiro's main objections to antifoundationalist political theory are that "to say that there are no neutral choices and that social criticism must be contextually informed is not to say what form it should take or tell us how to choose among competing interpretations of the norms prevailing...
...Marx's image of fishing in the morning, hunting in the afternoon, and doing criticism in the evening is thus a fantasy that ignores the limited and structured character of any conceivable human existence...
...Shapiro's comments on the connections between truth, autonomy, and democracy could use elaboration...
...Political theory, as a form of critical reason about the social world and the constraints and opportunities it makes available, is thus an indispensable intellectual activity that is inseparable from the practical concerns of human living...
...In these writings Habermas distances himself from naive conceptions of "ideal speech" of the sort Shapiro rightly rejects...
...Contemporary social-contract theory, he claimed, unlike its seventeenthcentury forebears, can neither rely upon theological underpinnings nor confidently articulate an alternative conception of human interests...
...Now of course Walzer would respond that even here there is connection...
...Although he rejects the wholesale antimodernism of Maclntyre, he draws from him the Aristotelian idea that humans seek an integrated life...
...These comments, however, are in no way intended to impeach the work as a whole...
...Shapiro tackles so-called antifoundationalist arguments head on, upholding a vision of "principled criticism" as the true vocation of the political theorist...
...Shapiro argues that this means that "we have to abandon the idea that there is any way of ordering social reality that can be read off from human nature or the nature of things as rational...
...There are clear parallels between his emphasis on human limits and Foucault's rejection of any generalizing norma108 • DISSENT Books tive theory...
...it may be the case that the most effective way of communicating social criticisms to Americans is to appeal to their own beliefs about American history...
...but this just illustrates that the issue is not so much connection versus detachment as it is the kinds of connections that are appropriate under different conditions...
...There is "a basic human interest," he argues, "in knowing and acting on the truth...
...While clearly inspired by a Marxian conception of ideology-critique, for Shapiro it is not an idea of liberation or freedom but of truth that provides the guiding ideal of critique...
...Toward the end of the book Shapiro draws connections between principled criticism and a democratic ethos...
...In this age of widespread ideological disenchantment, it is fashionable for political theorists to declare the demise of transhistorical "foundations" in political inquiry: to proclaim our rootedness in particular locales and to deny that it is possible to justify universal principles of political conduct...
...The figure of Vaclev Havel springs to mind as someone who insisted on "living in truth" against the odds and against convention...
...And in his interventions in the German Historikerstreit he has articulated, and exemplified, a compelling model of principled political criticism that is strikingly akin to that suggested by Shapiro...
...In that book Shapiro offered a critique of the contemporary social contract theories of John Rawls and Robert Nozick, "neo-Kantians," who sought to discover universal principles of justice...
...There is no reason to expect that a complete or architectonic understanding of the world and our place in it will ever be achieved or that the growth of knowledge will bring with it greater human freedom...
...And yet clearly Shapiro is closer to Habermas in his conviction that some aspects of an Enlightenment conception of reason can be redeemed...
...Because humans are historical beings, possessing the ability to organize their world, it follows that no particular form of hierarchy is required by the human condition...
...Two of these theorists in particular stand out...
...Shapiro suggests that for action to be authentic it must not simply be based on knowledge but on self-determination...
...As he writes: On my . . . view we embrace that part of the Enlightenment ethos that commits us to the possibility of scientific knowledge of ourselves and our circumstances, but we remain skeptical of the optimism in which the Enlightenment view of science was shrouded...
...Furthermore, it may not even always be true that "connection" is the surest way to effective social criticism...
...But he offers two powerful criticisms of Walzer...
...Pocock...
...The book picks up where Shapiro's previous book, The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory, left off...
...Political Criticism presents a provocative and compelling vision of political theory...
...And while he criticizes the vagueness of Walzer's notion of "connected criticism," he appropriates Walzer's idea that criticism and contestation are immanent in social practice...
...His "critical naturalism" involves two claims...
...Shapiro's book is a useful complement to the recent writings of Michael Walzer Reacting against the aridity of what he calls "ideal political theory," Walzer has emphasized the virtues of the "connected critic," whose arguments are always grounded in the particularities of time, place, and setting, and who abjures general principles in favor of particular judgments...
...Against Aristotle, however, Shapiro insists that there is no natural hierarchy of goods or virtues and that humans, uniquely historical and reflexive, are tragic beings, who "may develop expectations from social life that we can never satisfy...
Vol. 39 • January 1992 • No. 1
