This article argues that we encounter indexicality in political argument sooner than the literature would have us believe. Demonstratives like ‘that x’ and ‘this y’ and more classic indexicals like ‘here’, ‘now’, and ‘I’, are quickly revealed when definitional demands are made of terms like ‘freedom’, ‘justice’, and ‘national interest’. The truth-values of indexical sentences vary from context to context, but their truth-conditions do not. We unpack this paradox and show how coming to grips with it is important for the logical analysis of modal claims about possibility and necessity. This is crucial for understanding the methods of political theory if we are to take Bismark’s idea that ‘politics is the art of the possible’ seriously. We finish with a highly controversial claim: ‘the good’ is an indexical in political argument. Its reference varies from speaker to speaker, but we can nevertheless draw up truth tables for claims about the good in order to assess their logical consistency.
