Bernard Williams’ Political Realism and Epistemic Constraints

The normative force of political realism is still a hotly-debated subject. The question is how to reconcile a realistic understanding of politics with prescriptions that avoid justifying the status quo. Bernard Williams presents a particular strategy to strike a balance between the prescriptive capacity of political philosophy and the nature of politics. Williams constructs the Critical Theory Principle (CTP) to ensure that power structures ought to be justified in a way that is not heavily distorted by the very same power relations. This seems to be a normative move that is not reducible to mere morality (Williams 2005, p. 6). Provided that such a solution is achieved, Williams assumes that the realist desideratum is met. In this paper, I aim to show that the CTP is at odds with Williams’ realist commitments which deem the political rule-domination distinction normatively significant. Even if the CTP is not reducible to merely moral considerations, this does not suffice to contend that it is suitable for a realist theory of legitimacy. My claim is that the CTP constitutes an epistemic criterion which disqualifies every instance of self-justification of power due to the apparent circularity problem in such justifications, which is an epistemic deficiency. According to the CTP, justification of a power holder could be accepted insofar as acceptance itself is not created by the same coercive power, e.g. via indoctrination. This is an epistemic criterion in the sense that it specifies the kind of cognitive procedure which ought to be avoided. However, I argue that employment of the CTP cannot be sustained if one adopts Williams’ realist commitments at the same time. This is because there might be non-coercive byproducts of coercive state power which make individuals accept the justification of the state. In other words, not every instance of self-justification of power falls under the category of sheer domination while the CTP categorically disqualifies self-justification of power on epistemic grounds. By drawing on the social identity literature in psychology, I argue that individuals might accept the justification offered by power holders since the way power is exercised constitutes an essential dimension of these individuals’ social identity. In such situations, their acceptance would collapse into self-justification of power which is not allowed by the CTP. However, I contend that following the CTP is problematic because the influence of state power on individuals’ faculty of judgment does not seem to be coercive in cases like this. Non-coercive byproducts of coercive state power are not an instance of domination because power is not exercised over those who are influenced through the byproducts. Given the importance of the political rule-domination distinction in Williams’ realism, I hold that the CTP should be revised in a way that exclusively filters out instances of domination.